Tag Archives: All Saints Day

Calling All Saints

Religion 3 Comments

November 1 was All Saints Day. November 2 was All Souls Day. Early November is a time for remembering saints and loved ones who have passed away. Staying connected to our ancestors and honoring saints whose lives demonstrated love can strengthen our ability to have healthy relationships.

If you are remembering and honoring saints this November,  remember Saint Martin de Porres, who was the first Black saint from the Americas.  Born in Lims as the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and freed Black or indigenous Panamanian woman, Martin died November 3, 1639. Martin lived in Peru where Blacks and Indians were not allowed to become full members of religious orders. He was known for caring for the sick and downtrodden, especially African slaves. Martin performed miracles, curing the sick instantaneously and feeding many through alms he collected. It was said that when Martin prayed, light would flood the room. Click here for more about his life.

 

Remember Saint Josephine Bakhita. She was the first African woman saint. Born in the mid 1800’s in Sudan, Josephine was kidnapped and taken into slavery by Arab traders.  She was bought and sold several times over a period of twelve years before was placed in a convent in Venice, Italy. Click here for more about her life and love for all.

Venerable Henriette Delille may become the first Black American female saint. A French-speaking creole born in 1813 in New Orleans, LA, Henrieette founded the Sisters of the Holy Family. The religious group was created to care for the sick and educate the ignorant, focusing on educating slaves, which was illegal at the time. Like her mother and other relatives, Henriette lived in “placage” or in concubinage with a White man. Interracial marriage was illegal at the time.

November is Black Catholic History Month.  Click here for more on leaders of African descent and here for the Black Catholic History Calendar in the Washington, DC area. For Black saints you’ve never heard of, check out Madame Noire’s post.

 Click here for more All Saints Day posts from SuzyKnew!

Wash Away Your Sexual Ghosts During All Saints Day

Opinion Religion No Comments

Not only do we have ghosts from failed relationships, we have ghosts from failed sexual ventures, resulting from bad timing, poor body image or sexual experiments gone wrong.

We can be haunted by a failed attempt to give pleasure (like using our teeth instead of our tongue) or our vision or ourselves – like the time we tried to give some rearview action to our man and looked down in horror to see our belly jiggling and our breasts swinging in the air.

The gentleman may have enjoyed watching all that shaking and wobbling.  But, in our minds, we had failed and were upset. Yeah, yeah, we all know about how important it is to have a positive body image. But, knowing isn’t the same as doing. The ghosts of failed moves and feelings of inadequacy haunt our sexual lives and prevent us from getting the pleasure we seek – and deserve.

I spent All Saints Day (November 1st) and Day of the Dead (November 2nd) in a Catholic Caribbean country, where women spend the day cleaning the graves of their loved ones. For years, I’ve wanted to see this ritual and the long-awaited opportunity made me think more deeply about its meaning. If keeping family graves clean is a way of honoring those who have passed to keep our spirits alive, shouldn’t we routinely rid our sexual lives of ghosts to keep our marriages and relationships clean and alive?  Of course, having a “clean sexual life” raises religious and morality questions and what better day to do this than on All Saints Day. But, religious questions and sexual purity aside: if we don’t move past the disappointment and occasional humiliation to gather the courage to try again, we spook our sex lives, leaving them void of beauty and pleasure. Right?

This isn’t about him; it’s about us. As a woman, keeping it sexy is about confronting and chasing the ghosts of our sexual past.  Happy washing, Ladies!