Faith & Values: Coming Together with All Fellow Humans

Faith & Values: Coming together with all fellow humans

In my Christian tradition, today is the Feast of All Saints, when we give thanks for what one prayer calls the “great cloud of witnesses” who have gone before us. At St. Martin’s just before sunset, we’ll be reading the names of those who have died since last All Saints’ Day while ringing our bell for the first time in more than a year. In 1967, not long after our founding, the bell was a gift from Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in Norge. We’ll b…

Panag-apoy brings Sagada together in fire and faith

MOUNTAIN PROVINCE, Philippines – The air was cold and gray, as it always is in Sagada on All Saints’ Day. My family had just arrived from Baguio when the mass at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin began. Inside the century-old stone church, pews were filled with families listening intently as the names of the departed — those resting in the town’s Episcopal cemetery — were read aloud, one by one. Some of those names belonged to my own kin, whose …