Soul Cake

I’m a soul and I like cake.

I also like Sting.

So some years ago, this song by the English-teacher-turned-musician caught my ear for all the obvious reasons. Both the tune and the lyrics (found below), are haunting, perfectly matched for the momentary spirit of the Halloween/All Saints season.

Belatedly, perhaps, I am writing about All Saints.

In point of fact, at home I’ve been acting out of it for the last several days.

Only just shy of a year ago, my mama died.

We still haven’t gone through the complete cycle of “firsts,” though we are quickly nearing it. But this first All Saints Day, after she died, has had me this weekend remembering, and mulling, and baking, and family-ing, and retelling, all in her name.

Baking was her thing. In fact, her love of sugar, her love of carbs, became a bit of an issue for this dear woman of mine. All of her always-at-the-ready treats were both good and shared.

Anyone coming “a-soulin'” would have (were?) well fed.

The song “Soul Cake” seems to be about a tradition carried over from the Druids, one in which on people went door-to-door on All Hallow’s Eve, this night when a space opened up in time for the dead to roam the earth again. The practice was “Christianized,” as so many indigenous practices have been, and “soulin'” became the habit of this night, with poor beggars going house to house, asking that food be given in return for promised prayers for the benefactors’ beloved dead.

It was an interesting quid pro quo, this deal where the poor had no food but had time and motivation (not least of all in the form of hunger) to pray, and the wealthy had no time and, perhaps, no motivation to pray.

Their bellies were full, and they may not have liked those dead relatives anyway.

Some theories suggest that trick-or-treaters are the descendants of these ancient “Soulers,” a trick–or prayer–rarely intended or offered, but the easy treats pitched their way anyway.

This connection between hunger and food on All Saints Eve, Halloween, the pore in-between where the living and the dead have been said to have commerce again, I had never known.

It seems both rich and tokenizing.

To have a whole community participate in this remembrance of the dead, this reminder that we are made of our past; to collectively pause and give thanks for those who have gone before–while not being able to push really far back that we will go there too–feels as if loose threads have been pulled and because of that we are all a bit closer and warmer now.

But the not-so-faint element of double extortion by way of food-for-prayers strikes me as, well, off.

The word ‘saint’ comes from the Latin word sanct, meaning ‘holy,’ or ‘consecrated.’ In fact, that it shares a root with the word ‘consecrate’ begs for a lingering moment: the word ‘consecrate’ means “to make holy together.”

It is easy to isolate sainthood: So and so is a saint, usually because they bear difficult things, like poverty, illness, or your sister-in-law.

But whatever a saint is sainted for (either in the official sense or in the simple garden-variety recognition that something remarkable is done through this person), it’s not because they are particularly super just unto themselves.

It is because they are connected to a larger community.

They are servants to others.

I wonder what the day after All Hallows’ Eve felt like for both the beggars and the wealthy.

I’m betting that the hungry were still hungry, and the wealthy were still wealthy.

I’m betting that the persistent hunger of the hungry wasn’t as easy to forget as the one-night feeding of them was.

All Saints Day is still, even now, a pore, a peek-through-hole through which we can peer from our place of how it is and see into the space of how-it-should-(and we hope in faith shall)-be.

Lutherans say that all are sinners and, through God’s grace, all are saints.

I think that’s true.

But there is an element of sainthood here from which we Lutherans often shy, so afraid of works-righteousness, of anything that smacks of trying to prove ourselves, to justify ourselves.

It’s the piece of Christian living that is not about “in order to.” It’s about “because.”

In other words, those whom we call saints are those who not only peer in, but in word and deed attest to a different reality.

These are people–not perfect people, not unbroken people–who see hunger of many and varied sorts and do what they can do to fill people up.

That hunger might be as exceptional as devoting one’s entire life to the streets of Calcutta, or as simple as raising a child with dedicated love, or being a spouse dedicated to the lover’s life, and dying, and death.

The point is, a saint is considered so because he or she has bound him or herself to the persistent needs of another, even after All Saints’ day.

Even after a partner saint has died.

Even after you have died.

And so, today, and tomorrow, and on all days, whip up a soul cake of your fancy for the belly empty of what you can offer. Leave the light on, let the word get out: you have food for the hungry.

If you are the one with the growling tummy, ask (it’s not about begging, it’s about needing) for a soul cake. Prayers, while always coveted, are not necessary to receive: your want is enough, and is holy.

And in this way, we are all saints: yearning, offering, praying, consecrated, holy-together people.

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