I sometimes find November to be a strange and poignant month, pitched as it is between the glorious autumnal colours of October, and the frantic preparations for Christmas that characterise so much of December.   

For me, its distinctive importance within the Church’s year is as a time when we are invited to engage in some profound acts of remembering: the month in which some of us commemorate All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Tide, and Remembrance Sunday. At St Bride’s (the Journalists’ Church where I am Rector), it is also the month of our annual Journalists’ Commemorative Service, when we remember those in the media who have died during the past year.   

The act of remembering matters: by connecting with the past in different ways, we can understand more about the present, and build more wisely for the future. Having the courage to  re-engage with buried pain can sometimes be the first step towards inner healing. Remembering those forebears whose lives or examples have shaped our own can remind us of the debt of gratitude that we owe them. Recalling our own past suffering can alert us to the need to avoid replicating damaging behaviour towards others in society.   

Many years ago I came across a prayer from another faith tradition, which has its own history of past oppression. It has a wider message that perhaps speaks to us all in the way in which it exemplifies the importance of remembering, through connecting past and present. Part of it reads as follows:   

Help us to remember the heart of the stranger when we walk in freedom. 
Help us to be fair and upright in all our dealings with every human being. 
Oh, burn and brand the lesson of all the years and all the lands on our hearts. 
Lord, make us forever strangers to discrimination and injustice.