A Month of Remembering
A Month of Remembering
Alison Joyce considers the act of remembering, and why it matters, this November.
1. 'Oh, burn and brand the lesson of all the years and all the lands on our hearts'
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.
2. 'For all the saints'
November begins with All Saints’ Day, so every year at about this time, I find myself reflecting anew on the nature of sainthood.
As traditionally depicted in Christian imagery, saints are always easy to spot: just look for the gleaming halo. Unlike the rest of us, these holy figures appear to be different kinds of being altogether: a perception endorsed by tales of their miraculous powers and morally impeccable lives.
So I can remember my astonishment at discovering, in the New Testament, that St Paul routinely addresses ordinary members of his newly founded Christian congregations as ‘saints’ – as in his letter to the Romans: ‘To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints.’ (Sadly, this crucial detail is lost in some modern translations.)
When we survey our regular Sunday congregations, are we dazzled by the abundance of haloes? Do we behold a gathering of God’s saints? And if not, why not?
At the root of the language that we use about sainthood, sanctity, and also sacraments, is the notion of being ‘set apart’. Followers of Christ believe we are called to be in the world but not of the world. Because God takes something utterly ordinary and mundane - which may be bread, wine, water, your life, or my life; and through the power of his love and grace transforms it into something remarkable.
Every congregation I have known has had its saints. These are people who, however broken and vulnerable (and, interestingly, they were frequently both of those things), possessed a quality of simple goodness and compassion through which the light of Christ shone.
Which is why, each November, starting with All Saints’ Day, I find myself remembering with thanksgiving the saints of God who have blessed my own life through their example, their wisdom, and their integrity. And I am reminded that the call to sainthood is one that beckons us all.
3. Those whom we love but see no longer
The annual All Souls’ service at my own church is always one of the most poignant and profound events of the year.
Churches whose tradition it is to mark the event, have differing ways of doing so. Here at St Bride’s, around 200 candles are placed on the main altar before the service. At the mid-point of the service, the church’s lights are dimmed, and each candle is lit as the names of lost loved ones are read aloud. When the altar is fully ablaze with candlelight, in the darkened church our choir sings the Allegri Miserere. The effect is heart-stopping.
There are three things that never fail to strike me. The first is that, by remaining on the altar throughout the service, the candles are present, but symbolically always just out of reach, as are those whose loss we mourn. Secondly, there is something extraordinary about seeing all those living flames, their flickering light reminding us of those whose souls live on, now safely held in the presence of God. It is a profound testimony to a love that has the power to transcend all things, even death: the love of God in Christ.
And the third is that everyone present at that service, myself included, is for that moment united in our experience of loss, however individual our own journeys of bereavement will have been. Grief can leave us feeling desperately isolated; at this service we are reminded, just for a moment, that such loss is a tragic part of the fabric of human life: we are not alone.
For some, the importance of remembering lost loved ones is about honouring the memories of those whose lives have shaped their own; for others it is acknowledging their sense of loss; for yet others, the act of remembering can be the first step towards healing painful memories of broken relationships.
But its ultimate importance lies in recognising that all of this is gathered up within the love of God; and it is there that our hope for fullness of life resides.
4. The pity of war
In 2019, I joined other clergy from London Diocese on a retreat at Merville in northern France – a village that had been the site of a military hospital during both world wars. While there, I visited its military cemetery and made an astonishing discovery.
At first sight it was all-too familiar: row upon row of identical white Purbeck stone memorials, each bearing the name and regiment of a soldier (alongside those whose identities remain unknown), all of whom died tragically young. But there was also something completely unexpected.
The headstones at Merville are ordered chronologically, according to the dates at which each man died, regardless of rank, regiment, nationality, or even religious faith. And there, amidst the Allied dead, shoulder to shoulder with them, without any distinction whatsoever, were the graves of German soldiers.
Conventionally, combatants on different sides are interred in separated cemeteries, or in distinct areas within the same burial ground. But these young men on opposing sides were united in death, powerfully and poignantly, with no discrimination whatsoever: there was no right or wrong, good or bad; ‘us’ or ‘them’ in this cemetery; just heartbreaking testimony to a tragic waste of human life.
It is a terrible but inescapable fact of human history that sometimes the only way to resist brutality and violence is with force. In our fallen world, sometimes we have no option but to choose between the guilt of activity, or the guilt of inactivity. And sometimes inactivity is worse. But the importance of remembering the tragedy of war, and the pity of war, and the true cost of war, can never be overstated. Because if we do not remember, we cannot learn.
The American political theorist John H. Schaar wrote:
The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.
If we are to create a new kind of future, we can only do so by taking account of the tragedy of the past.
