“Naming Our Saints” by Joan Dodge
All Saints Day
November 1, 2026
I am starting with a confession that All Saints Day was not a day of celebration in the Presbyterian church, in the small Quaker town of Swarthmore where I grew up. I had heard of the day, but it was the Catholic church folks who celebrated not the Protestant churches in this small town. So..I thought that besides myself, maybe there were others here at Seekers that wondered about what All Saints Day was all about.
I want to start with a short story about a little boy and his mother. I found this story on the internet as I was reading and did some simple adapting:
“One day a mother was walking through a beautiful church building with her 4-year-old son.
As they walked, the young boy looked around.
The little boy stopped and was curious about the stained-glass windows that looked so beautiful with their bright colors.
As he looked at the windows, he asked: “Who are all these people in the windows, Mommy?”
“They are the saints,” said the mother.
“What are saints, Mommy?”
The Mother was stuck.
How was she going to explain who saints are to a 4-year-old boy?
As the boy was still looking up at the windows and as the Mother was still wondering how she would explain who saints are, the young boy shouted out:
“I know who saints are. They are people that the light shines through.”