Your world is haunted—a Halloween manifesto

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

– Psalm 139:7-8 As people prepare for Halloween festivities

the irony cannot be more pronounced:

ghosts, goblins, witches roam our streets

when for the other 364 days of the year

people live in denial – denial of transcendence, of mystery, of magic. But for one day we remember, we remember that our world is not as immanent – this-worldly – as people imagine

there is more than just what meets the eye.

Like the retractable roof on the Skydome in Toronto, or GM Place in Vancouver,

our world has slowly closed ourselves off to the glory of the heavens.

We have found all of our pleasure on the playing field, and have shut out God, the stars, and the notion that the source of fullness, joy, and love comes from somewhere ‘out there.’

Yet, something does not satisfy; the Earth and everything in it is still not enough to fulfill our desires.

Yes, our secular age has closed our world in.

But… but have no fear, for the heavens and everything in them still exist.

And at Halloween we see a crack in the secular ceiling;

a fissure, an annual opening to the holy, to the haunting.

Have no doubt in this irresistible treat: your world is haunted.

But here’s the trick: the One doing the haunting is much more gracious,

and not nearly as scary as you have made him out to be.