All Saints' Day Special

Two things to know going in to this post:

• Today is All Saints' Day, and
• I have a lot of friends, both on Facebook and in real life, who are clergy (mostly but not exclusively mainstream Protestant denominations and Episcopalians, which is arguably but not necessarily a mainstream Protestant denomination... oh, never mind).

So, today, a friend posted this to Facebook:

I sing a song of the saints of God,
Patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died
For the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
And one was a shepherdess on the green;
They were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too. 

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
And his love made them strong;
And they followed the right for Jesus' sake
The whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,*
And one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
And there's not any reason, no, not the least,
Why I shouldn't be one too. 

They lived not only in ages past,
There are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;
For the saints of God are just folk like me,
And I mean to be one too. 

 ~Lesbia Scott, who wrote it for her children in the 1920s 

Two more things to know, as I told her:

• "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God" was one of my very favorites as a kid. Not favorite hymns, favorite songs to sing, period, any time of year.
• How did I not know that the author's name was Lesbia? Or that that's a name at all? It's enough to make a person reconsider having children.

*I do recall asking my priestly if not saintly parents why only one was a priest. That seemed a little bit damning to me, at the time.