“Memories and Reflections”
A Message by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
for Memorial Day Sunday
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
May 24, 2009
Life and death, those two strands that we braid and un-braid, braid and un-braid. On this day of memory and remembering, they are intimately woven. We’re here and alive in this time and space. We remember those who are not.
It’s not so simple.
For some of us, today is a day of remembering and honoring the war dead, those who were downwind from the winds of war. Some here this morning knew those winds intimately. I don’t know how much you remember, but it’s tough to gloss over what happened, tougher perhaps to bring them into the light of today. Surely there’s an intimacy established among those of you who were in combat, a brotherly/sisterly bond that prevails and protects. When those of us who have not seen combat presume to guess what it was like, we flail and we fail. We’ll never know. I hope we’ll never know.
Memorial Day for me is a somewhat turbulent time. I’m torn between honoring all who have died and calling special attention to those who have perished because we as humankind have been less than kind. Again and again, we have failed to rise to a diplomacy that prevents what I believe is one of the great sins of humanity. So rather than honoring the so-called war dead exclusively, I seek to honor all who have known the precious gift of life and have moved into the mystery that is common to all life, the mystery of death.
By memory and love, those who have died endure. Some live on in common memory. Most fade in the mortal memory of survivors who inevitably join the ranks of the dead. I cannot give them names, for their names are forgotten; but they once graced this earth—for better and worse and across that immense space between. I invoke especially the lives of the long forgotten.
How to “gather at the river” that flows with the droplets of each life, above a bed of ancient stones? How to “gather at the river” affirming each droplet, each ancient stone? How to “gather at the river?” In the spirit of gathered memory, I invite us to speak responsively the words of Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn:
Responsive Reading 720, "We Remember Them," Roland B. Gittelsohn (adapted)
…………………..…..
“In the opening of buds and in the rebirth of spring, we remember them.”
On this day of memory and remembering, I invite your voices of memory and reflection. Whose memory would you like to lift up this morning? How does this person’s life touch you today?
Voices of Memory and Reflection
Sources:
Roland B. Gittelsohn, “We Remember Them,” in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 720.
Robert Lowery, “Shall We Gather at the River” (words and music), First published in Happy Voices in 1865. In Singing the Journey: A Supplement to Singing the Living Tradition, Unitarian Universalist Association, Boston, 2005, 1046
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