Tag: Remembrance

One Mind Between Them

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They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.
~Wendell Berry from “A Timbered Choir”
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Late September Sun

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I want to remember us this way—
late September sun streaming through
the window, bread loaves and golden
bunches of grapes on the table,
spoonfuls of hot soup rising
to our lips, filling us
with what endures.
~Peter Pereira from “A Pot of Red Lentils”

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Color of Steep Sun

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Red is the color of blood, and I will seek it:
I have sought it in the grass.
It is the color of steep sun seen through eyelids…
This is the time of day for recollections
~Conrad Aiken
Twelve years ago it was a day that started with bright sun above and ended in bloodshed below.
It is a day for recollections;
we seek remembrance,
with eyes open,
and through closed eyelids
steeped in the red that flowed that day.
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Summer Silence

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pastoralpond

“Summer makes a silence after spring.”
– Vita Sackville-West

As we bid farewell to England, Scotland and Ireland today, leaving mild temperatures in the 50’s to go to atypical temperatures in the 90’s at home,  summer will be hitting us with a surreptitious sledge hammer when we disembark in Seattle.   Hay will be ready to pick up in the fields and we will return to work within hours of getting off the plane.  But even with the responsibilities we reassume, we will know the joy of a house filled with our (now adult) children and friends from all over the world.

Life is rich with memories tightly woven into the tapestry of our everyday routine.   I will look back on this special time with Dan with fond remembrance for new friends discovered, amazing places experienced,  all the while blessed by returning home together to everyone we hold so dear.   Summer may be silent after spring but it is brimming with blessings.

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A Presence of Absence

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photo by Gary Jarvis of Dutch Reformed Cemetery

“The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still. I went over to the graveyard beside the church and found them under the old cedars… I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there, but I did… I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated with presences and absences, presences of absences, the living and the dead. The world as it is would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come.”
Wendell Berry in Jayber Crow

Today, as always over the last weekend of May, we have a family reunion where most turn up missing.  A handful of the living come together for lunch and then a slew of the no-longer-living, some of whom have been caught napping for a century or more, are no-shows.

It is always on this day of cemetery visiting that I feel keenly the presence of their absence: the great greats I never knew, a great aunt who kept so many secrets, an alcoholic grandfather I barely remember, my grandmother whose inherent messiness I inherited, my parents who separated for ten years late in life, yet reunited long enough for their ashes to rest together for eternity.

It is good, as one of the still-for-now living, to approach these plots of grass with a wary weariness of the aging.  But for the grace of God, there will I be sooner than I wish to be.  There, thanks to the grace of God, will I one day be an absent presence for my children and hoped-for grandchildren to ponder.

The world as it is remembers the world that was.  The world to come calls us home in its time, where we all will be present and accounted for — our reunion celebration.

All in good time.

The Name of the Room

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

“The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.” 
~Frederick Buechner 

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Drawing Nigh

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photo by Josh Scholten

“Night is drawing nigh.  How long the road is.  But, for all the time the journey has taken, how you have needed every second of it.”
~Dag Hammarskjöld

It is easy to be grateful for the pretty times of life: those picture-perfect moments that end up on Christmas photo-cards and in detailed descriptions in holiday newsletters.  What we want others to see and what we wish to remember does not always reflect the experiences of the whole journey.  We are naturally programmed to concentrate on “The Best of…” rather than surveying the whole shebang, warts and all.

It isn’t all glorious sunsets and happy endings.  We don’t usually take pictures of the potholes, or celebrate the obstacles and flat tires along the way. It is rare to acknowledge and honor the failing grade, the chronic illness, the mortifying mistake, the tragic accident.

Yet it is all a part of the journey, every second of it, even the moments we try hard to forget are worthy of our appreciation.  Even the difficult times move us a little closer to our destination, perhaps looking bruised and scraped, still making our way slowly, shakily yet surely.

How long the road is.  How fortunate we are to be heading home.

photo by Josh Scholten
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It is now my fifty eighth Memorial Day–what I wrote two years ago still is true: I see this as a day for weeping, so the rain coming from the sky is fitting.

Hankerings

On my fifty sixth Memorial Day, I need to be reminded not to forget the sacrifices made by my fellow countrymen.  This is not a vacation day.  This is a day meant for the hard work of painful remembrance.  This is a day to slog through the mud of the battlefields, the searing heat of the deserts, the dripping humidity of the jungles, the icy snowbanks of wintertime battle fronts.

I do not want to forget what it means to get up each morning clothed in liberty, and fall asleep each night without fear.  We are meant to cry this day, to weep over the loss of life over the generations, the losses in battles that continue to this day.

The cost of staying free must not bankrupt our souls even as it taxes our resources.   Once we forget, if even one of us forgets, then the battle comes…

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Do You Remember?

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“Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields… and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?”
―  J.R.R. Tolkien

In our despairing moments, we recollect and hold on to memories most precious to us, recalling what makes each moment, indeed life itself,  special and worthwhile.  It can be something so seemingly simple that becomes the most cherished and retrievable–the aroma of cinnamon in a warm kitchen, the splash of colors in a carefully tended garden spot, the cooing of mourning doves as light begins to dawn, the velvety soft of a newborn foal’s fur, the embrace of welcoming arms.

Today, as our family once again heads to two cemeteries to honor our dead, it is those simple things we will recall and treasure, pass on in stories, and never leave buried in the ground.  The legacy of these memories lives and thrives in the next and then the next generation, to be told and retold, not to rest, eventually to be forgotten, under a marker.

Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo?  Do you remember?

Briers and Thorns

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…Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you…
Ezekiel 2:6

Today I will make wild blackberry cobbler, facing down the brambles and briers that thwart my reach for the elusive fruit.
I gather more berries than scratches to prove that thorns must never win and I must not yield to them.

Painful thorns have always been part of life. They barricade us from all that is sweet and good and precious.
They tear us up, bloody us, make us cry out in pain and grief, deepen our fear that we may never overcome them.

Yet even the most brutal crown of thorns did not stop the loving sacrifice, can never thwart the sweetness of redemption,
will not spoil the goodness, nor destroy the promise of salvation to come, not even on a day when hopes and dreams
went up to the skies in the darkest smoke and collapsed into unrecognizable rubble.

We now simply wait to be fed the loving gift that comes from bloodied hands.