06/11/2014

Memory’s a strange and wonderful thing. Just consider this. A letter arrives in the post. I don’t have to open it to know who it’s from, the handwriting gives the game away. As soon as I see the envelope, I can picture the person who wrote it, someone who’s known me since I was a child. At the very sight of it warm and vivid memories flood into my mind. Before I start to read, I’ve been transported back in time. See what I mean? And I could add so many examples to show the way apparently innocuous events are charged with the possibility of opening our minds, awakening us to old pleasures (or fears of course) and reminding us that the past hasn’t gone forever. It lurks barely below the rim of our consciousness, just waiting for its moment to greet us. It could be a place we pass through, a snatch of music we hear, someone’s face, the bite of an apple – any one of so many things that releases an energy we didn’t know existed. It isn’t that our minds stretch back to a disappearing past; it’s more the past rising up to claim the present. I get this feeling every time I take bread and wine in a service of Holy Communion. “This do in remembrance of me,” he said and those words do the trick every time. Time isn’t just an ever-rolling stream that bears us all away. It’s with us, in us, around us, bubbling away beneath the surface and always waiting to surprise us.

Dear Lord, live with us today, go with us into the day’s work; give us a sense of your abiding presence with us in all we do. We thank you for all that is past. And trust you for all that’s to come. Amen.