Memorytide

All Souls Day by Jakub Schikaneder

November is a time for remembering: All Saints and All Souls, Armistice Day and Guy Fawkes Night. As darker nights draw in and the world prepares for winter, the year gone by edges closer, like a haunting, and we remember all we’ve lost over the previous twelve months, in all its loneliness and hurt.

2020 has been a hell of a year, politics and Coronavirus combining to destabilize everything. Our losses have been magnified – all those months separated from those we care about, all those days of uncertainty, all those hours in the middle of the night as we try to ward off the shadows of despair. 2020 is going to live with us for a long time.

It’s okay to grieve. There are those who are no longer with us, there are opportunities that evaporated, there are hopes that have withered as their roots dried. Why shouldn’t we mourn the goodbyes, be saddened by the postponements? If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that getting back to normal is easier said than done.

But remembrance is also strength. We remember those we loved and still love even though they’re no longer here, We remember the things they taught us, how they made us feel, the billion things that made them them. We can hold these close, draw power from a shared story. The pain is real, the loss is real, but so is the love, and the greatest of these is love.

We remember our faith, all the saints who went before us, from St. Peter carrying the Keys to the Kingdom, to a quiet old matriarch carrying a mop. They formed us and helped us and taught us, they’re part of the DNA of our faith and they’re still with us somehow, a strange communion that exists even when our church buildings are closed and our meetings have found their way onto Zoom and Youtube, the waves and the wires. Remember that the Church is bigger than we think, that it incorporates robes and suits and tonsures and cornrows and wheelchairs and all those called by God, remember that the margins don’t keep people out, they just make the Church a whole lot bigger, remember that the Spirit will fly wherever the Spirit pleases and it’s easier to follow because you’ll never trap that Dove in a cage.

We remember the betrayal and the anger and the brokenness, the things that happened but shouldn’t have happened, the cold shoulder, the knife in the back. These things are also real, and they were wrong, they were stupid, they were sin. We remember to cry out for justice, for the pain to change us, not so that we become a monster that fights monsters, but so that it spurs us forward, helps us to get back on our feet one more time, to not let the gatekeepers and the life-thieves keep us from a better future, not let them steal our greater visions.

We remember the broken, we remember the fallen, we remember those who once stood proud on the parade ground who now shiver in doorways. We remember the heartbreaking sacrifices, we remember the silence at eleven, we remember the limitations of flags. We remember those who fight and those who flee, the improvised explosives and the sunken dinghies. We remember that, while don’t all go to war, and we don’t all escape a home in ruins, we can all try to be healers, be peacemakers, can all turn our swords into ploughshares, even if those swords are words.

This is a season of memory, and it has been for centuries. We should mourn with those who mourn as the days get short and the nights get long. But in this time of memory, in the days of ice and desolation, there are seeds buried deep in the ground and every tree stripped bare has the potential for new beginnings hidden within. Because Spring will spring, as unlikely as that sometimes feels; Easter is on it’s way, and while even Jesus still carries the scars of the past in his hands, he reaches out in the dark, weeps alongside you, picks up a lantern and guides us towards the dawn.