Standing Naked:
Words for All Saints and All Souls
All Saints, Little Bealings – 1 November 2025
God give you peace my sisters and brothers.
For what is it to die,
but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is to cease breathing,
but to free the breath from its restless tides,
that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence
shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top,
then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs,
then shall you truly dance.
(from ‘On Death’ in The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran)
I make no apologies for being a Franciscan – and a particularly ‘nutty’ Franciscan at that! I seem to find joy where others find only sadness, and passionate concern where others see things to be normal.
This means that I am not always easy to live and work with. I seem to be unable to be ‘in sync’ with those around me. Fortunately, I am still loved by many who forgive my puppy-like approach to the world. Which is often like a wild pendulum swing between a tail-wagging over-exuberance and a sad-eyed and droopy-tailed penitence.
For this reason (being out of sync with others) it sometimes feels as if I am living in a different world to those around me. It is almost as if I see the world, not through rose-tinted spectacles, but instead through a Polaroid lens. There is a 180° phase shift in much of my worldview compared with how others perceive things.
And then, when I read Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet speaking of death as standing naked in the sun and that if I surrender myself enough I will truly dance! I think I might be on the right track…
Yes! This is the whole purpose of life, to be completely wrapped up in God. Finding, and rejoicing, that our lives are indeed, as St Paul wrote to the Colossian Church, hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3.3). This security, this life hidden inside the wounds of Christ (as Ignatius Loyola prayed), made possible only by Him leading the way in sharing our death.
So the Franciscan in me sings all the more loudly that, too often omitted, verse of the Canticle of Brother Sun that runs;
And thou most kind and gentle Death,
Waiting to hush our latest breath,
O praise Him! Alleluia!
Thou leadest home the child of God,
And Christ our Lord the way hath trod.
Because of God’s generous and profligate love death is not the end of life but the beginning of the dance of eternity. Yes, today will hurt like crazy, especially as we recognize the names of loved ones being read aloud, but it is not the end!
If we could but grasp that then we would start dancing now. Not only a Peace but also a Joy which passes understanding would become the hallmark of each and every follower of Christ.
Listen how our beloved Redeemer met death;
[Look] to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
(Hebrews 12.2)
Once again, we run into the paradoxical meaning of the word ‘passion’. Yes, the Cross carries with it an immense amount of pain and suffering, but when that pain is borne in love it is transformed into joy. The writer to the Hebrews reminds us that the joy that was to come for Him far exceeded the pain of the death of the Cross.
What was this deep intense ‘joy’ that our Brother Jesus was looking towards on the Cross?
Obeying the will of His Father? Yes!
Loving those whom he had been given to the end? Yes!
Finally reconciling the whole world to God and making us into God’s friends? Absolutely yes!
The cross is full of pain, as is much of life, but it is not an empty pain leading to a final death. The pain we feel at times of death and mourning, transformed by the love shown on the Cross, has become our birth pangs as we, and those who have got home ahead of us, are born into the life after life.
And a new birth, even on a dark November night is always something to be joyful about and over which to celebrate!
Acknowledgements:
Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet and The Art of Peace – compiled by Joe Jenkins © Duncan Bird Publishers 2008
[This blog ‘Standing Naked’ is copyright © Andrew Dotchin 2025 and may be reproduced without charge on condition that the source is acknowledged]
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