Monday March 11, 2024
Lent is a time for remembering. It’s difficult at times to remember what has actually occurred in our lives since Easter last year, which was less than a year ago, especially when our daily news and emails focus on the present – yesterday or even just this past week. Considering the hype, one might think that the Oscars were all that mattered.
Of course, there was the State of the Union speech and the rebuttal, if you can call it that, by Alabama Senator Kate Britt, put against a sparkling clean kitchen backdrop, so clean and sparkling you’d wondered if it had ever been used. You almost forgot a few wars or so on the other side of the world.
There’s Ukraine where a people are fighting for survival, and the horrors in what we want to call the Holy Land, not to mention Sudan. These continuing realities interposed themselves into Hollywood hype, telling us to remember, remember.
Prayer for the Day
From all that preoccupies us draw us apart, O God,
Bringing us to that place where we center ourselves on you;
From all that comforts us, O Holy One, discomfort us,
Opening our hearts to the cries of the world around us,
Grant that we not only remember those trapped by poverty and war,
But that we work for Easter to come to all.
In the name of the One who opens our hearts to new life,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present — not to say, ‘Look what they did then,’ rather, ‘Look what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present.
Jonathan Glazer, Director, “The Zone of Interest”
Remembrance restores possibility to the past, making what happened incomplete and completing what never was. Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again.
Giorgio Agamben, Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy
I consider the days of old, and remember the years of long ago.
I commune with my heart in the night; I mediate ad search my spirit
“Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable?
Has God’s steadfast love ceased forever?
Are God’s promises at an end for all time?”
Psalm 77: 5-8