Reformation Day - All Hallow's Eve - All Saints Day

October 31st has become layered with meaning, being the site of contested revelries, a tip-off to Luther's nailing 95 theses on the Wittenberg door &amp & All Saints Day. I taught two Reformation-themed Sunday School sessions, featuring music, visual art, and the concept of vocation.

Here's part of the gigantic murals in Neuchatel entitled, "The Second Coming of Christ," illustrating a dramatic change in pictorials of an otherwise ethereal topic; here, spiritual future meets Swiss farmland:

 'Agriculture' and 'Industry'

A renewed status for the everyday and crafts, juxtaposed with scenes of Judgment Day with the lake and hills of Neuchatel seen through the windows; the heavenly kingdom turns out to be a redeemed 'this world.'

Spoke of the failed reforms of Italian Savanarola, executed in Florence, against materialism. Imagine if Calvin - the Reformation's theorist - had studied art rather than law?

A bronze door replaces the original door of Wittenberg where purer doctrine linked to an economic practice. In sad contrast to the modern church's silence on the recent debt problem, where the institution with the language of debt, redemption and forgiveness has nothing to say.

The Sorbonne's Bibliotheque where Calvin and Viret studied marked a key trend as reformers went to the centers of cultural powerbroking, not the evangelical ghetto and fear of the city, partially explaining the former's impact and the latter's marginalization.

Prizes: Nutella for Savanarola's hometown, Ferrara, IT; Haribo for GMY; Toblerone for Switzerland.

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But we still do the pumpkin thing.

Michael dreams of living in his own house where he can grow pumpkins and tend a garden. After the corn maze and the haystack pyramind,

Then there're the other October 31st activities.

Although the jury is still out on how to best handle Oct 31 - ranging from early Christian mockery of the devil to skeletal reminders of death to general harvest celebrations.

Death remains the last enemy, thus still alive, real, not trivial, yet not a gospel of fear. Maybe parody, sadness, as we remember saints of old in All Saints Day.