How often do you come across a person who from time to time says: ‘That’s how we used to do it’? He may be referring to counting £1 notes or dialling a telephone number. He may be talking about walking to school rather than being ferried there by parents. Or he may be talking about the parish church where he first came across the Christian faith.
If that is the case, he may recall singing the psalms, dropping pennies or threepenny bits into a collection-bag – and perhaps committing to memory the words of the Book of Common Prayer: the general thanksgiving, the litany and the collect of the day. He may also remember singing ‘Onward, Christian soldiers’ or ‘We have an anchor’. Memories come in battalions. They are often a confused medley. Only as we look back can we see that some remembered things are better than others.
Our memories can prove to be a springboard or a rut. They can either lead us to be predictable bores or imaginative go-getters. All too often when we look back, we see dreams unaccomplished, opportunities missed. But the other side of the coin is the remembrance of achievement, of fulfilment, of recovering the lost years that the locusts have eaten.
As a nation we have our Remembrance Day. As Christians we have our Lord’s Supper. As individuals we have our birthday. And Remembrance Day can still stir good yet troubling memories as few other days do. If we have our own troubling memories of grief, loss and waste (to use Studdert Kennedy’s use of that word and the poem of that name), we can be emboldened to do all that survivors can do to make good that waste.
DRIVE-IN
Forty cars brought 80 people to a drive-in harvest service at Christ Church, Lisburn, Co. Antrim. Today is the last day to submit entries to a pumpkin competition on the theme of ‘Light’. The 44-page parish magazine for November contains Church Pastoral-Aid Society verses of hope and reports the undertaking of £200k repairs to the church tower.
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