A Prayer for All Souls

It's Halloween. Pagans believe the "veil between the worlds" is thin this time of year, the holiday they call Samhain, and the dead walk among the living. Others, like the Mexicans in my neighborhood, believe today is the day to honor the dead. Most people believe the day is one for playing with identity and challenging the rules of life and being and reality.

Let me offer my prayer of thanks to the ancestors and spirits.

Thank you to all my ancestors for living the lives the helped me live mine:
Dorothy Scott Horst Holden, George Horst, Conrad Horst, Lisbeth Horst, Dorothy Ashcroft Fitzgerald, Thomas Fitzgerald, Bertha Menzies, and all the unknown Horsts, Scotts, Fitzgeralds, O'Neills, Ashcrofts, Menzies and all the others, from the US, from Ireland, from Germany, from the Russian Volga, from England; Christians and Jews alike.

Thank you to all the good and kind spirits who open the path and guide me to a better, more knowing life. Thank you to the American spirits, to the Indian, African, and European spirits.

Thank you to the lost souls and my beloved dead, to all my friends no longer with us in physical form.

Thank you to the earth, to the elements, to the spirits of nature. Thank you to the gods of old. Thank you to the Orishas. Thank you to the worlds above and below.

Thank you to God for the world that is, was, and will be.

For peace, for health, for balance, for wisdom, for prosperity, for abundance, for hope...for me, for my parents, for my relatives, for my loved ones, for my boyfriend, for my friends, for my pets.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.