All Hallows' Eve: Harvest, the dark season, and the month of the dead

And Is it not enough that every year

A richly laden autumn should unfold

And shimmer into being leaf by leaf ...

All Hallows' Eve and words from Malcolm Guite's poem for Autumn come to mind. Today we bring the season of Harvest Thanksgiving, our yearly rejoicing in "A richly laden autumn," to a close. The pumpkins, nuts, and apples which decorated our churches for the Harvest festival now decorate our homes. Pumpkin soup and apple pie sit on the table. It is one last day of rejoicing in Autumn's bounty and the Harvest season, looking back on weeks when we have delighted in the divine goodness which has, for another year, "graciously given unto us the fruits of the earth in their season".

Sky and hills and woods are one, grey and dead.

Hard to believe there be daffodils,

That green things will happen again.

At night houses shine out in cries across fields of floodwater,

The cold of wet and wind like the cut of a spade

in a bare hand.

With All Hallow's Eve, mid-Autumn passes. Kenneth Steven's poem 'November' marks the passage from October's rich autumnal colours to November days, the days of late-Autumn: shorter, darker, colder. The "mellow fruitfulness" will be behind us. The trees bare, the approach of Winter evident. Part of the evocative character of the Eve of All Hallows is this passing over into late-Autumn days, the dark season of the year. We know darker days and "the year's midnight" now lies before us, days when the Evensong prayer 'Lighten our darkness' has deep resonance.

As he walked through the woods

in the late October twilight ...

he could not help but pause

every once in a while

at the crackle of leaves

from behind him like footsteps.

All Hallows' Eve brings us to November, the month of the departed. Christopher Yokel's poem 'October Twilight' points to the unsettling character of this time, the unsettling character of which the gothic and dark of All Hallows' Eve is a sign.

The month begins with All Saints' Day, embracing our prayerful commemoration of all the faithful departed, those to whom we are united "in one communion and fellowship". It passes into the solemn silence of Remembrancetide, as we gather at memorials bearing the names of those who fell in the the fields of Flanders and villages of Normandy, the deep waters of the Atlantic and skies over Europe. And it ends with Advent close, the great collect of the season first ringing out with its proclamation that Christ will return "in his glorious Majesty to judge both the quick and the dead".

It is a month when we may feel the departed closer to us: in stained glass and in churchyards, at war memorials and in dark days as Advent draws close.

This month of the departed should make us uneasy and uncomfortable, for it confronts us with the truth that "in the midst of life we are in death". The unsettling character of All Hallows' Eve is a fitting start to the month, reminding us that the shallow verities of our age - rational, progressive, secular - cannot give account for the darkness, or comprehend death, or explain why we are unsettled and made uneasy by the ghostly, by the crackle of leaves behind us, sounding like footsteps, on this last day of October.

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

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