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INTRODUCTION: Just a few miles from the Red River, which runs between the South border of Oklahoma, and the North border of Texas, there’s a little town in Oklahoma, named Marietta. Several years back, my sisters, some of their families, and my son and I, met at a grave site at a well-kept cemetery just outside Marietta. A modest, but new little grave marker had been just been installed in memory of my Uncle Austin, my father’s eldest brother, whom those of us present at his grave site, never knew or met.

But my father who was in his late 80’s, had told me of having promised his mother – my paternal grandmother – that he would put a marker on his older brother’s unmarked grave. Though she had been dead 40 years, Dad had never fulfilled that promise.

Now, recognizing that the end of his days were approaching, the unfulfilled promise was weighing heavily on him. My older sister had gone to the cemetery and invested significant time in locating the grave. Then together, my sisters and I had gone in to purchase the marker and I agreed to conduct a memorial service for my middle name namesake, Uncle Austin, more than 70 years after his passing.

On that day, I told the life-story of Austin as I knew it, and the short, troubled 29 years that he had lived. We held hands, I quoted the 23^rd Psalm, and we all said the “Our Father…” and then we left.

When we told my father what we had done, it was as if a very heavy burden had been visibly lifted. Later as I saw him sitting looking out the window, there were tears coursing down his cheeks. It was as though he had not only fulfilled a promise, but something even more important: The marker and the service which I had described to him, had said that Austin had lived and died…that he and his life were important…which is one of the purposes of All Souls Day, which we observe today. Like many such days it is a wonderful example of ancient practices and superstitions dating back almost a thousand years. The legend goes like this:

A pilgrim was caught up in a storm while returning from the Holy Land. The storm was so strong that his boat sand and threw cast him on a desolate island.

A hermit was living there and told him that amid the rocks was a chasm open to Purgatory. There was a perpetual groaning which rose from the rocks of the cries of the tortured souls who were held there.

The hermit also claimed he had heard the demons complaining that every time a faithful person prayed for one of the souls in purgatory, especially if the prayer was from one of the monks of Cluny, that soul was freed.

When the pilgrim made it back home, he immediately informed the abbot of Cluny, who then set the 2^nd day of November as All Souls Day, a day of intercession on the part of his community for all the departed souls in purgatory.

Now naturally, I’m not suggesting there is any such thing as demons, or tortured souls whose cries can be heard groaning from a chasm in a rock on an ancient island. But rather, in the same way as my father felt the weight of an unfulfilled promise for his departed brother, so do we feel the need periodically to recognize and remember those departed people who are special to our lives, as well as to our nation and world. It is our memory of them that keeps their name special and their lives beloved. That’s what All Souls Day is about.

Too, one of the spiritual comforts of traditional religious faith for many is the belief that no life is ever forgotten, but is eternally lodged forever and ever in the mind and memory of the mystery we name God.

Today, I want to recall a special memory as well. But in this instance, I’m referring to a specific person who is being honored today and tomorrow by being the first woman ever to lie in state in the rotunda of the U.S. capital building in Washington, D.C. I refer of course to Rosa Parks, who died this past week on Oct 24^th at the age of 92. As the ancients did for their departed, so we pause to remember her life and gifts.

First though, let me say that it’s important to remember despite the great contribution Ms Parks made as mother of the modern day civil rights movement, that she was not unique. From the beginning of America’s hideous history of enslaving Africans, there was a multitude of brave women and men who fought to change that awful practice.

n People like Frederick Douglass, a one-time slave who twice fled to freedom and became one of America’s most eloquent spokespersons for freedom.

n Women like Sojourner Truth, who because of her size and strength was used against her will as a breeder of future slaves and gave birth to more than 12 children, all of whom were taken from her as infants. She too fled from slavery and became a voice for freedom not only of slaves but also of women. Her eloquent “Ain’t I a woman” speech at the first women’s rights convention in Seneca, New York, in 848, inspired countless feminists for more than a century and a half.

n Brave persons like Ida B. Wells, who as early as 1884 led a campaign in Memphis, Tennessee against segregation on the local railway, even suing the railway company, and later writing and speaking across America against lynching.

n It included WEB DuBois, part of the initial force at the turn of the 20^th century in founding the NAACP, and whose brilliance exposed the hypocrisy of those who sought to prevent African Americans from intellectual achievement.

n Great artists like James Weldon Johnson, who wrote the National Negro Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing (which is in our hymnal), God’s Trombones, and in 1912 The Autobiography of an ex-colored man, and whose work with the fledgling NAACP led to a beating that almost cost him his life.

n Thurgood Marshall, who was the lead attorney for the NAACP’s landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Topeka, Kansas Board of Education, and who later became the first African-American to serve on the same High Court.

And the list could go on and on, of women and men who made pivotal and critical contributions, known and unknown, to right the horrible legacy of slavery, racial prejudice and bigotry against people of color. They set the stage and created the context in which Ms Parks made her once in a lifetime impact on the modern civil rights movement.

So when we honor Ms Parks, we do it fully aware that her act of bravery and courage was not in a vacuum. It was not only in concert with an honor roll of the brave, but also a memorial to the countless thousands of Black women raped by White women, and untold hundreds upon hundreds of young Black men lynched, before our nation gained a grain of sanity, and admitted to the fact that all women and men are created equal.

It began December 01, 1955, when Ms Parks, a quiet and well-respected 42 years-old seamstress at a department store in downtown Montgomery, Alabama got on the bus at the end of a day of work. At that time in the Southern states of America, the racist laws known as Jim Crow ruled on public transportation. And in Montgomery, Jim Crow said that the first ten rows on the city buses were reserved for "Whites"; the rest of the bus was for "Coloreds," as the signs in the back of the bus put it.

On this particular day, the first ten rows were full of whites. The rest of the bus was also filled except for one row – the 11th row. It had three black persons, and one empty seat. Ms Parks sat down in the one empty seat on the 11th row.[2]

Three stops later, a White man got on the bus and there was no seat available in the first 10 rows. The bus driver looked back and saw Ms Parks and the three other blacks in the 11^th row. He used the N-word, and called out, “I want those seats." He made that demand, despite Jim Crow law, even in Montgomery, stating that no black could be moved from the “Colored” section, unless another empty seat was available. What the bus driver was ordering meant that four blacks (three women and a man) would have to stand, so that one white man could sit down.

When they didn’t move, he said, "Yo’all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats.” After a second's hesitation two of the women and the one man rose, but the other woman, Ms Parks, remained seated. I think she must have heard Frederick Douglass whisper in her ears, “Keep seated, Ms Parks.” She heard WEB DuBois say in the other ear, “Don’t move, Ms Parks.” She heard Ms Ida B. Wells say, “Don’t listen to him.” She heard the voices of millions of Americans of African descent plead, “Ms Parks, keep that seat. It’s time to stand up by sitting down.” And so Ms Parks kept seated. She listened to the voices of the past, she saw the pain of the present, and she looked into the unknown future before her, and positioned herself for a place in history.

The Civil Rights laws of the 1960s form a direct line back to Rosa Parks and 1955 when Black Americans chose nonviolent protest against the racism of the land. But not only were African Americans the beneficiary. Ms Parks kept seated and because she did, we Whites no longer have to bear the shame of being party to laws of White racism. Because she stayed seated, we Whites no longer have to take part in laws of racist privileges and preferences because of the color of our skin.

As you know, when Ms Parks was arrested, the black community of Montgomery rallied in her support and formed the Montgomery Improvement Association. One of the most important actions they took was to elect the 26 year old Dr. Martin Luther King as their leader. He had just finished his dissertation and received his Ph.D. from Boston University. For the next 382 days, he successfully led a boycott of the bus system. But not only did the Blacks of Montgomery win the right to sit anywhere they wished on the bus, they triggered a national protest we call the modern civil rights movement, which in 10 years resulted in the first Civil Rights Act, which forever changed America. And it started on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, with a seamstress who was tired from a day’s work, but also tired of oppression. She was the mother of that movement, Rosa Parks. President Bill Clinton presented Ms Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, and she received a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

So on All Souls Sunday, we remember not only Ms Parks, but also those forgotten giants and ordinary people of courage and integrity who fought the good fight and kept the faith even when the odds were overpowering and the chance for success so minimal.

So whom do you remember today? One of the fortunate dimensions to life is that the pain that hurts so much when loss occurs doesn’t stay forever. Time does have a way of healing. And if we’re fortunate, we can get to the place of loving to remember those who are gone, their words, their smile, their love.

As one of the characters in the novel Cold Mountain puts it, “That's just pain," she said. "It goes eventually. And when it's gone, there's no lasting memory. Not the worst of it, anyway. It fades. Our minds aren't made to hold on to the particulars of pain the way we do bliss. It's a gift God gives us, a sign of his care for us.”

Next Wednesday, Nov. 2^nd, All Souls Day, is not the big day here that it is in some parts of Europe. But even though it’s rooted in legend and myth, it says to us, let’s remember those who’ve gone on. Let’s celebrate their love and their lives, and hold close the memories of those times we shared.

^[1] Presented on October 30, 2005 at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting in the Foulds Theater of the Alliance for the Arts, 10091 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.

^[2]Ralph Abernathy in his book, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down,