I GREW UP as a very small-town Midwest Protestant. I knew nothing of saints. I knew little about communion (except it involved cubes of white bread and remembering Jesus). Our key rituals were altar calls and baptism—out with the old, in with the new. Everything bad washes away with the blood of the Lamb. My independent Baptist uncle on my mom’s side and my United Brethren pastor uncle on my father’s side would say long prayers before holiday meals, the former probably working in that everyone there who wasn’t his flavor of Baptist had better get right with God.
Despite admonishing litanies, I was always interested in God. I was a farm kid who was often alone, wandering, making up stories to entertain myself but also to work out context for life and death. The ancient, and the present, and the infinite were close at hand: I found shellfish fossils in the dirt of our landlocked farm, once an ocean bottom; waded in drainage ditches (it’s one way to learn about leeches); played with our outdoor cats in the soybean field under myriad stars. The world seen—enchanting, terrifying, broken—drew me to the world unseen.
After years of being in intentional Christian community and then joining the Episcopal Church, I know much more about saints, communion, baptism, and how they’re connected. The latter being not just a sins-cleansing rebirth but how we are joined through Christ to siblings near and far-flung, now and through the centuries, saints known and unknown.
I believe that communion—Eucharist—is about Jesus as real presence, beyond collective memory. I embrace mystery and the power of prayer, even though most days I’m a walking billboard for a lack of spiritual discipline.
Today, as families are ripped apart and for-profit detention centers swell with their grief and pain, I depend on Christ within us and around us. Now, when preening billionaires are doing their best to commodify and dismantle everything from our electoral system to protected forests to food safety and healthcare—when human institutions are shoved from flawed to crumbling—I need belief in the communion of saints and assurance of being “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1).
My trust goes where logic may not linger.
This is not escapism but sending taproots into the perspective and companionship of centuries of martyrs and miracle workers. This is belief (help our unbelief) in a God who is with us, yesterday, today, forever. My trust goes where logic may not linger, to belief that the power of prayer—fundamentalist grannies praying at kitchen tables, monastics kneeling in the middle of the night—are vital components of our work for justice and defense of the vulnerable.
We each may be called to other ways of being salt and light, including marching, organizing, gathering resources, exhortation, proclamation, or just being decent and kind. And as someone who knows God sought me before I sought God, I am not too bothered about the specific beliefs or lack of belief for others—God calls us by many paths. But I hope those of us who do find grounding in sacred mystery and the wending of the Holy Spirit remember that the world seen needs shuttle diplomats and willing conduits to the world unseen. It needs prayer and all the saints. They are there. They cheer us on.
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