Sunday November 1st, 2026
Lamentations 3
John 6:37-40
On the Death of the Beloved
by John O’Donahue from book TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US
Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts
Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.
Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives,
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of color.
The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.
Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.
Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was alive, awake, complete.
We look toward each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.
Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.
Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.
When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dare grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.
May you continue to inspire us:
To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.
In Church of England tradition, we come together over these few days at the beginning of November for a short season of remembrance. The Church has marked All Saints and All Souls for hundreds of years.
It stems from the belief that there is a powerful spiritual bond between those in heaven and those living on earth. It is often said in my family that the dead sit at the dinner table long after they are gone.
This service offers us space and time to give thanks to God for the life and love that was shared, for the memories we carry and to ask for God’s help if we have unfinished business with those who have died. Not all our remembering will be of the good, sweet times as none of us are perfect and neither were they!
Grief is difficult because it is messy and unpredictable. It does not follow a set pattern. It is often triggered at inconvenient moments, catches us off-guard and undefended. The only alternative to avoiding grief is to avoid love. To avoid the grief I feel over my person who has died means I would have had to forfeit the love and the relationship that we shared. We cannot have it both ways.
I chose John O’Donahue’s poem ‘On the Death of the Beloved’ this year because I really liked it and love him as a poet. Donahue was an Irish poet and Celtic spirituality teacher who died well before his time. Fortunately he left a large number of incredible poems.
The poem acknowledges the deep pain of loss—“Though we need to weep your loss”—while honouring the vibrant, complete life the person lived. A voice that brightened everything, smiles like flowers, a sparkling mind.
It suggests that the deceased is no longer distant, but dwells within the rhythm of breath, close to the living and found through beauty, nature, kindness, and music rather than just a lonely memory. If someone only exists in memory, we grow lonely. This is why services like this are so important. We are not alone, look around. We need to continue to share the stories.
The writer of Lamentations has grown lonely. They have ‘forgotten happiness and lost hope’. They likely witnessed the fall of Jerusalem around 587 BC and the horrors experienced by the Jewish people. Jerusalem was once the chosen city of God but has now fallen from grace because of bad behaviour. The enemies have taken over and the people who lived in Jerusalem have been exiled. The loss for the people is immense.
The reading we have here is about the author’s own suffering; he believes that God has deliberately marked him out and is now not listening to his prayer. His peace is gone. Yet at his lowest point he remembers God’s steadfast love, hesed. Hesed is the love and mercy God has towards his people; it is a long-term and loyal love. It is love that never ends. It is new every morning.
The writer has experienced this love, not just with his head and his heart but in his very soul, in the marrow of his bones. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ he says. The Lord is enough for him.
Likewise, On the Death of the Beloved, the text guides the mourner to turn dark grief into hope and to live with a generous heart until an eventual reunion.
Jesus is telling his disciples, his closest friends in the reading from John’s Gospel that that nothing will be lost for those who believe in God. Jesus has been sent to gather people, to love and teach and show them the way to God. Reunion will come again. The ultimate reunion, beyond what we can imagine is coming.
For right now though we wait. We live, we love, we get on with this life. The bereavement that we are facing is not the whole story. It might be a very big part of the story right now, might feel like it has taken over the whole story for a long time. Do not forget the happiness of the past. God’s mercies are new every morning, his love is steadfast. Look not only in memory.
