It is the week of All Saints. All Hallows’ Eve is Tuesday. All Saints’ Day is Wednesday. All Souls’ Day is Thursday. Most of us will celebrate on Sunday. It began for me, though, when Sophie Lynn Sauls, child of God and Ginger’s and my first grandchild, made her anxiously-awaited entrance into the world yesterday.
In Anglican tradition All Saints Day is properly a baptismal day. With that in mind and with loving thoughts of the entry of this new saint into the world, I share with you a poem a good friend shared with me on the day of Sophie’s birth. It is by Irish poet Daniel Kelleher and was written for the baptism of Colin Kiernan. It was recited by Colin’s father T. J. Kiernan, who was the Irish Ambassador to the United States, to John and Jackie Kennedy when their son John was born. John’s uncle, Ted, read it 39 years later at John Jr.’s funeral. The pronouns of the wrong gender notwithstanding, it sums up well the adventures of the heart I wish for Sophie.
For CK, at his Christening
By
Daniel Kelleher
We wish to the new child
A heart that can be beguiled
By a flower
That the wind lifts
As it passes.
If the storms break for him
May the trees shake for him
Their blossoms down.
In the night that he is troubled
May a friend wake for him
So that his time may be doubled,
And at the end of all loving and love,
May the Man above
Give him a crown.
It is such adventures of which sainthood, blessedness, are made.
Agape,
Bishop Stacy Sauls