All Saints and saints!

In many nations All Saints’ Day, November 1, and All Souls’ Day, November 2, are treated like a single holiday. In Guatemala, the indigenous villagers of Todos Santos (“All Saints”) honor the dead for three days starting October 31. Families pay homage by decorating the graves of their loved ones and offering flowers, corn, squash, and orange slices at church. (Guatemalan Tourist Bureau)

My mother's favorite holiday was Halloween, for obvious reasons if you look at her name! So when I took fall flowers down to my parents' graves yesterday, I decide to "decorate" my mother's stone...at first thought it was a bit irreverent but then I read the article above from the Guatemalan Tourist Bureau! Good to know that I am not the only one who decorates gravestones of saints!!! She would have been the first to say she wasn't a saint, but we know that God calls each of us into the sainthood of all believers...we are each anointed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ's own forever. And to that end, we live out our lives the best we can with whatever we have and in the end, we fall happily into the arms of God...home at last.