Saints

Across from where I’m sitting, in a café in St. Andrew’s, Scotland, is an old Gothic church. Above the pedestrians on the corner of the church is an architectural feature that is hardly, if ever, noticed. It’s a shelf or pedestal adorned with a canopy above. A beautiful piece of stonework, it looks glaringly empty.

Long ago, when the church moved away from the Catholic church (during what was called the Protestant reformation) the people did away with anything that spoke of its Catholic roots, including destroying all the statues of saints. Whether it was Peter or Paul, Mary or Catherine, or Andrew himself, the saints were taken down from their place of prominence leaving only a shell of a reminder. Like the reformation itself, space was created but things were lost.

Staring across the street at the historical whisper, I wonder what saint once stood looking over the people passing by? In its emptiness, I felt invited to think who I might put on that shelf. The saints of my life are not famous like those from church history. They may have been saints only to me, people with less regal names who led ordinary lives, but they pointed me to the faith I now profess and, in their way, look down on me still as I pass through this brief moment in time.

There was Robert Carson, “Carse,” an old man who invited me to join him in pew 25 at the modest Episcopal church in my college town after my father died.

There was Fred, towering over me in his robes and purple shirt, who made the biblical story come alive by connecting it with ordinary life.

And then there was a woman named Ada, who tickled my arm when I was sad or afraid and assured me everything would be alright while also reminding me I had something to offer this world.

My list is much longer, but it’s my list. The question being asked across the street is who’s on your list? Who would you place on that shelf?

I don’t know how all this spiritual stuff works, how we remain connected to those who now dwell upon another shore, but just saying their names makes them live again. I can see their faces, hear their voices, and feel their touch, if only in my heart. Such reflections make my soul swell, and I have to believe that mentioning their names somehow echoes across time’s sea and causes their souls to swell, too.