Everything is in some way sacramental. All depends on the receptiveness and openness of our hearts. —John Chryssavgis
While walking St. Cuthbert’s Way in Scotland in September, my companions and I passed a number of old graveyards. Headstones told of the lives of those who lived in centuries past, holding stories I will never know. One grave, however, did tell a tale that not only sticks with me, but opened me to a much wider story.
I cannot tell you the name of the one who lies there nor the dates marking the span of that person’s life. The graveyard itself was gated and locked, as was the old wooden church that stood guard nearby. I could only stand outside a stone wall and gaze at the headstone.
Why did this particular grave capture me so, in ways none of the others had that I had passed along the way? At the foot of this old, moss-covered headstone was a bouquet of fresh flowers.
Who visits this grave and leaves fresh flowers, I wondered. Surely, there was a story there as unknown as the story of the one lying below. All I could see was the connection, the thread, from the days of time past to our present. And in doing so, I saw community of the living and the dead, a communion of saints, if you will.
A NEW MEANING
I was raised Roman Catholic and frequently heard and said the phrase “Communion of Saints,” which is part of The Apostles Creed, a prayer we recited as children. I never thought much about that phrase as a youngster, frankly, because I had no idea what it meant. I know now it is an expression of all the living and dead who believe in the Christ.
But in Scotland I began to see a new possibility of meaning for this phrase when I wrote in my journal that I carry the stories of my companions. I carry their pain, and I carry their triumphs, as they carry mine.
I was fired.
I didn’t get an interview.
It was my second miscarriage.
I was raped.
I went to law school.
I became a midwife.
I taught indigenous children.
The Sun published my story.
Through sharing our life stories, we bless one another. We create a Communion of Saints, not by what we believe but by what we share and by the support and care we give to one another.
WHAT TOUCHES
In her poem “Sound Bath,” Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer writes: The world enters us in waves, waves that seep / through the doors and we wade in them. / Wading, we come to know there is no way / to not be touched by every other life …1
I think the stories of others are the waves that touch us, take us up beyond our own small world, where we mistakenly believe we are the only actors on stage. Because I know if we only carry our own stories, our lives are all the poorer.
OUR GIFTS
Picking up on Trommer’s metaphor, I think of how Jesus, in the role of prophet, calls us to come and walk on water. The realists among us say no: “It can’t be done. You cannot walk on water. Gravity wins.” But as the late spiritual teacher and theologian Barbara Holmes points out, we can, indeed, walk on water, and do so when we offer our gifts to the world.2
The gifts we have to offer are rooted in the stories of who we are.
Though I did not know it when I made the commitment to walk St. Cuthbert’s Way, I think now that part of the purpose of the pilgrimage was to meet people and to carry them forward into my life –– consciously or unconsciously –– as they now carry me. It is a way to contribute to the building of a worldwide community, each of us carrying the stories of the others.
The stories feed each of us in their own way, in a type of communion. A Holy Communion. A Communion of Saints.
HOW WE GO ON
The flowers at the foot of the old headstone tell me those still walking this Earth care about that place of rest for a number of souls, and that one individual is remembered in a special way. I imagine that the care of this grave and those of the others found within that yard are not just the work of one family, but a community of families, living in the village surrounding that church with its old headstones. Perhaps they are the descendants of those who now sleep here. Perhaps they are newcomers who, despite the lack of a common name, still care to create the connection and tell the story of community.
Community. That is the vehicle by which those who sleep in graveyards and those who still walk, work, play and love on Earth come together. In community, there is a place for all. Both the living and the dead. A place for all to belong.
It is how we are to go on. It is how we thrive. It is how we are to live.
FOR REFLECTION: Do you see ways you can expand the creation of a Communion of Saints in your own life, and therefore in the lives of others, by the stories you share and the gifts you give?
1 https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2025/11/01/sound-bath/
2 Adapted from Barbara A. Holmes, “We Shall Also Be Prophets,” July 2022, CAC Living School curriculum. Unpublished material. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/can-we-be-prophets-like-jesus/
Top image: Barbara Lyghtel Rohrer
Midtext image: Pixabay/StockSnap
Side image: Pixabay/Avelino Calvar Martinez
