Greetings Dear Ones,
As the calendar pages turn to November we’re encountering the theme of Memory. Memory, with all its warmth, wonder, pain, and complexity.
Memory has been important to me for much of my life. I’ve wanted to know and remember where I come from and how I’m connected to so many people who went before me. And I’ve been curious about the memories I can’t hear with words: the memory of the land, which I see in hills, riverbeds, and mountains. There are even the forgotten memories I’ve encountered and treasured while gardening: a lost and long-forgotten key, a child’s toy, even a small memory box placed there long ago and returned to the earth after I found it.
Memory creates us and often, even when we can’t remember the exact things we know we once knew, glimpses of stories come back to us and we laugh and laugh or we cry or we just have to share the few threads we do know. The lines of memory and the emotions it evokes are written on our hearts even long after exact memories fade.
Often times we want and need to hold onto memories, to build them up over time, to pass them on, to share them, to celebrate them.
Sometimes we want and need some memories to fade, and sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.
As we reflect together this month, what’s your relationship to memory? What do you want from it?
And so I’ll leave you with “Wanting Memories” by Sweet Honey In the Rock. Give it a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW2TpW4gCt8 In this beautiful piece they sing again and again:
“I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me
To see the beauty in the world
Through my own eyes.”
As we move into November, may we treat memory as the precious and fragile thing it is. May we remember the gifts of memory and allow our memories to re-member us, even when we can’t get all the details.
Love and Blessings,
Rev. Diana