Soon families all over the world will be commemorating All Souls’ Day. Guatemalans will write notes to deceased loved ones, which they’ll attach to the tails of elaborately decorated kites to be flown up to heaven at the Giant Kites Festival. In the Philippines, feasts will be prepared featuring beloved ancestors’ favorite foods. Some families will share those feasts in a picnic at the ancestors’ tombs, lighting candles of remembrance and sometimes even spending the night there. Thousands of candles will turn the cemeteries of Poland luminescent, while in Hungary, electric lights will stay on in homes throughout the night, inviting those who once lived there to come inside and partake of the food set out for them. In Mexico, descendants will celebrate the holiday by creating altars to their loved ones and decorating them with festive arrangements of flowers, candles, photographs, and candy skulls.

How will you commemorate All Souls Day? Will you light a candle? Visit a graveyard? Prepare a feast? Or simply whisper a prayer of gratitude for those you have loved, lost, and hope to meet again?

For Those Who Walked With Us

by Jan Richardson

For those
who walked with us,
this is a prayer.

For those
who have gone ahead,
this is a blessing.

For those
who touched and tended us,
who lingered with us
while they lived,
this is a thanksgiving.

For those
who journey still with us
in the shadows of awareness,
in the crevices of memory,
in the landscape of our dreams,
this is a benediction.

From Richard’s blog, The Painted Prayerbook

All Souls’ Day (also called Day of the Dead) is celebrated on November 2nd.