Memory. It is not just recounting the past as we want to remember it but also helps to shape our vision of our future. Sometimes sad, wistful, at other times joyous, cheerful, memory holds us within its grasp. Transient, memory can also fail us as we struggle to remember significant events in our lives.
Memory is not just individual, but societal as well. As a people, we remember significant events in the life of the Nation; however, we also misremember them as well, with the result of many of the divisions and polarization we are now experiencing.
We often want to forget painful memories, but our attempts to block them fail, and we feel trapped by them. Moving beyond them is not the same as forgetting them, but rather helps us to shape our future by integrating them as part of our lives. Our ability to remember is a gift from God whose grace guides us through the important process of building our lives in the future.
Prayer for the Day
Gathering the elements of our lives, we bring them into place,
The blush of health, the pain of illness, the grief of loss, the gift of love;
All we have carried through the seasons of our lives we bring to you,
Made sacred by your presence in our lives today.
Holy One, be with us as we find sustenance in memory,
Healing our hurts and lightening our burdens
We ask this in the name of the One who heals us,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The unfolding drama of life is revealed more by the telling than by the actual events told. Stories are not merely “chronicles,” like a secretary’s minutes of a meeting, written to report exactly what transpired and at what time. Stories are less about facts and more about meanings. In the subjective and embellished telling of the past, the past is constructed—history is made.
- Daniel Schacter, from Searching for Memory
Memories are not keys to the past but to the future.
- Corrie Ten Boom, Dutch rescuer of Jews (1892-1983)
The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicket will rot.
Proverbs 10: 7