Saints in Holy Connection Abiding

Teen suicide rates are an epidemic scourge devastating this nation.  Those people in your Facebook page are not sustaining you.  Your phone, for the most part, is alienating you from all that is worthwhile.  And it is also highly addictive.

I see people even in the mist of congregational prayers stuck in their phones.  Not attending at all to the present moment.  Not present for the community that is holy nourishment.  Certainly not attending to the God present in that gathering.

The Rabbi Martin Buber posits that relationship is so central to existence that in fact, God is Relationship.  To respond to that holy moment is to will one thing.  It is to will your complete presence to the other.  The other who is a “Thou.”  Not an “it.” 

All who commit to such singular gift of themselves to the other, to their community, to the natural world – those I call the Saints of God in Holy Connection Abiding.

This can happen anywhere.  You can really meet them on trains or in shops or at tea.  Even at Best Buy.

I was there to see why my upgrade order for a new iPhone had not gone through.  Something was very mixed up at Verizon.  They had handled the initial attempt to purchase and now it was completely screwed up.

Their rep on the phone spent some 45 minutes of my time going around in circles with this order.

I was not in the best of moods when I hung up and decided I needed to talk to a real, live person.  So, I headed off to Best Buy.

There I found a young African-American salesperson about thirtyish.  A fellow named TJ.  His broad smile and welcoming attitude immediately softened my distress.

He got on the phone with the Verizon people.  Patiently he waited as he was handed off several times to the next higher up person who might be able to resolve the issue.  All the time he was the picture of Holy Patience.  Just listening to his end of the conversation, my spirit was nourished.  Here was a Holy Connection.  Divine Relationship.

It seemed like the 40 or so minutes I waited, while TJ resolved everything and handed me a new blue iPhone, had gone by in a flash.  During the moments he was on hold we talked about our families.  He showed me pictures of his children, all named with biblical names.  He told me about his church and the difficulties they had during COVID.

Of course, I had some pictures of Luther and my family.

By the time we had finalized the sale, I was a most happy camper.  My soul had been nourished by this brief connection.  TJ is one of the glorious Saints of Holy Connection Abiding.  God sent!  He made my day.

Those who respond to community need are also Saints in Holy Connection.

These days I often find my thoughts circling back to those who gave their lives for others during the tragedy of 9/11.  I recall the one fireman responding to a woman coming down the stairs of one of the towers, who told him, “Don’t go up there.”  He replied, “It’s my job.”

One of the most beloved who died that day was the chaplain Father Mychal Judge, much beloved by all firefighters.  He could often be seen at a fire praying for those rushing towards the flames and into smoke-filled buildings.  Or offering consolation to those pulled from the fire who had lost everything.

On the day before those tragic events of 9/11, he offered this prayer at the commissioning of a renovated firehouse:

“Good days.  And bad days.  Up days.  Down days.  Sad days.  Happy days.  But never a boring day on this job.  You do what God has called you to do.  You show up.  You put one foot in front of another.  You get on the rig and you go out and do the job.  Which is a mystery.  And a surprise.  You have no idea when you get on that rig.  No matter how big the call.  No matter how small.  You have no idea what God is calling you to.  But he needs you.  He needs me.  He needs all of us.”[1]

Father Mychal, a Saint of Holy Connection who would give his life at that fire on 9/11, like so many others of the FDNY.

The Beatitudes embody that very same spirituality – life lived in connection.  Connection with oneself.  Connection with one’s neighbor.  Connection with one’s world and all of nature.  Fr. Mychal embodied that connection with those firefighters and his community.

“How blessed…” begin the various petitions of that reading.   Not “How happy.”  Baruch (בָּרוּךְ) signifies something far deeper than the ephemeral pleasure that happiness connotes.  

Fr. Mychal may or may not have been happy on many days.  He most assuredly was blessed and was a blessing to all he encountered.  As the many who would attest at his memorial service days later. 

Blessed souls.  These are the saints of God.  You and I as we attend to the Spirit within, around and out and about.  Blessed, indeed in Holy Connection.

We recently lost another blessed soul, Delores Huerta.  Truly a Saint of Holy Connection.  At 96 her life was well spent for others.  She worked in the shadow of Cesar Chavez in the fields in and around Bakersfield, California.

She was a gifted organizer, bringing hope to thousands of migrant laborers who toiled in the sun-soaked fields picking our lettuce and grapes.  She was responsible for the laws which protected these workers and enabled them to strive for a living wage, protected them from pesticides sprayed in the fields, and hope for a future for their children.

Now we have ICE hunting these workers down like dogs.  Deporting them to God-knows-where.  I remember being out in those fields with my picket sign in support.  When those jobs were offered to citified white workers, not one of the 6 or 7 who took them up on that offer lasted more than a couple of hours.  I say, give all these workers instant citizenship.  NOW!  They’ve earned it.

Her efforts enabled Jai and me when living in Los Angeles, to host 5 or 6 of these workers in our home during the Safeway Grape Boycott.  When I didn’t have classes, I would be out there on the picket line with them at our local Safeway store.

That experience was my immersion into Spanish as none of them spoke any English.  I can still vividly remember when one of the women showed up in our kitchen with a plastic bag while I was preparing dinner.  She said something in Spanish which I didn’t understand.  Jai, who is fluent in Spanish, told me to say to her, “Que ponga la busura aqui,” pointing to a trash can in the corner.  “You may put the trash here.”  My life was immediately enriched in that moment.  The beginning of a Holy Connection through that lyrical language.  And through the companionship of those grape workers during the month or so they lived with us.

Delores was arrested 22 times.  She was ruffed up by strike-breakers and so badly beaten by a police officer that she suffered broken ribs and a ruptured spleen that disabled her for months.

“The mother of 14 children, she often was seen changing diapers between organizing meetings.  Nursing her babies during breaks in negotiations.  Her children often lived with friends, eating donated food.  Most of them grew up to be dedicated activists and professionals, including a lawyer and a physician.  Some became performing artists and one a therapist, another a business administrator and one a chef.”[2]

Later in life, Delores had the courage to share a dark side to her life.  Cesar Chavez had raped her, resulting in the births of two children which she gave up for adoption.  Her courage opened the way for other women who had been abused by Chavez to come forward.

Why did she wait so long to reveal these ugly truths?  “I saw him, again, as my boss, as my hero, as, you know, somebody that would do the impossible…I never talked about it to anybody and the reason I didn’t is because I just didn’t want to hurt the movement.”[3]

For the sake of those she championed in California’s fields, she suffered in silence.  She bore that cross for others.

This week I received by copy of The Veteran, the publication of my veteran’s organization, Vietnam Veterans Against the War.  There I read of the fifth school library we have funded in Vietnam.  These gifts have also spurred other investment in children by their government and others.  Taiwan, through a private foundation has also donated books and other resources.

A Holy Connection between our two peoples, overcoming the estrangement of that tragic conflict.  Vietnam still abounds in people with stunted or missing limbs due to the United States Air Force having dumped tons of Agent Orange on that nation.  And even our own government, for years, wouldn’t acknowledge the damage it did to our own soldiers and their offspring.  A gift of evil passed down generation to generation.

My veteran’s organization, a salesman, a chaplain, a pedestrian on a corner — Saints of God Abiding in Holy Connection.  Yes, God is Love and those who abide in Love abide in God and God in them.  Glorious saints all.

At our Pilgrim Place noon meal, there is a “sharing” offered up by one of our folks.  Mary Ann Brussat offered this up the other day.  It’s a reading from the artist that created the sculpture of St. Francis that’s behind her house, Frederick Franck.  It’s from his book, Fingers Pointing Toward the Sacred.[4]

It reveals the generosity of this Holy Connection leading to sainthood.  What this generosity is all about for us ordinary mortals.

“I was five and lying in high grass.  A bee hummed close to my eye and frightened me. Then the bee started to suck honey and at that very moment I became sun, a bee, flower and grass.  ‘Me’ had evaporated with my fear.”

“Then, when I was eleven, on a country road, I saw a snow flurry approach from afar.  The first few snowflakes fell around my feet from the dark wintry sky.  I saw how some of the flakes melted immediately on impact, others stayed.  Again, ‘Me’ disappeared, melted with snowflakes, became one with road and sky and snowstorm.  It has happened often, always when least expected.”

“A few hours before leaving on this journey driving somewhere in New Jersey, I lost my way back to the parkway.  At last, at a traffic light stood a pedestrian, a very fat man in a battered homburg hat.  A greasy cigar stuck out straight from what looked more like a snout than a face.

“‘How do I get to Route 4?’ I called out.”

“‘Route 4,’ he repeated, chewing on his cigar.  ‘Nothing to it!’  His little eyes twinkled with kindness.  ‘Take a left at the second light, can’t miss it!’  He had put his fat hand on my sleeve and given a friendly squeeze.”

“I looked at him and saw.  I tried to thank him, but no sound came.  I made a kind of bow.  The jelly had become Man.”

“What is spiritual experience?  A snowflake melting, a bee sucking honey, a fat man at a traffic light.  Trivia.”

The world is filled with such glorious saints of God.  Saints in Holy Connection Abiding.  Amen.

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[1]Garrett M. Graff, The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 (New York: Avid Reader Press, 2019), 3.

[2] Robert D McFadden, “Labor Leader of Farm Workers Who Earned Folk-Hero Status,” The New York Times, October 29, 2026.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Frederick Franck, Fingers Pointing Toward the Sacred: A Twentieth Century Pilgrimage on the Eastern and Western Way (Junction City, OR: Beacon Point Press, 1994).

Delores Huerta
1930-2026

November 1, 2026
All Saints Sunday, Proper for All Saints

  “Saints in Holy Connection Abiding”
”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Revelation 9:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10

1 John 1:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12