At the altar, the priest invites the community to re-member Jesus…
We remember his death,
We proclaim his resurrection,
We await his coming again.
The life that was dis-membered by fear, pain, violence, and death on the cross, is raised up by God. But life must be remembered by us, two or three gathered around the table, breaking bread in remembrance of him.
Anamnesis. The practice of actively not forgetting. Don’t inject yourself with the anesthesia that will silence your grief, pain, and loss. Don’t succumb to amnesia, allowing the sharp jagged edge of love to be lost in a blur of misty haze. Instead, remember what the powers of this world would encourage you to forget. Remember God with us. Remember Emmanuel. Remember the experience of feasting at a table with the beloved betrayer, the denier, and the friend. “Remember me,” Jesus says, “I fed them all.”
These days, I feel broken to pieces, showing up for life with some limbs missing… maybe an organ has been extracted. I’ve removed my mask, but it still seems to be firmly in place. I long to show up whole, to be re-membered. I want my life to flow from my heart like an honest, open vein… unobstructed, unobscured. Flowing free “like a river,/ no forcing and no holding back,/ the way it is with children.” writes Rilke. It is exhausting to live dismembered.
Sometimes, I discover a table set in the wilderness, with 2 or 3 gathered around, who remember Jesus and help me remember me. I feel the “swelling and ebbing currents,/ these deepening tides moving out, returning.” Maybe we all become whole in the memory of others who refuse to forget us.
Who remembers you? Who needs to be at your table of remembrance? Who helps you become whole?
I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.
If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning.
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.
Rilke, Book of Hours, I,12
I have a bonsai tree named Keith after the bonsai master, Korean War vet who first started it. I have a bonsai cherry tree from a cutting of the tree we planted for our terrier. I have a dendrobium orchid in honor of a Polish colleague/friend who was killed in a car accident. He was a true gentleman, encouraging, cultured, and he had survived WW2. I drove from work to the nursery on the day I learned of his death and came across the little plant. We didn’t know each other that well, I simply respected and liked him. Yet another seedling in honor of my nephew who was killed last year in a car accident.
My children will remember me, along w/ some friends, but I think folks will remember my directness and science side, not who I am. Mostly, those who came close to knowing who I am died a long time ago. My foster brothers are my extended family joy and know me better. I feel at home w/ them; I’m not on a pedestal or expected to perform, but we’re far apart in distance. I was at my nephew’s wedding recently, and my younger brother rather unexpectedly came up behind me, after a few hours of reception dancing and talking, and he gave me the sweetest, longest, bear hug. It was/is a sustaining kind of hug and it makes me remember (and miss) him. They all teach me love and to not put up walls and grant me safe harbor to be vulnerable.
It doesn’t bother me as much anymore living & dying w/out someone knowing my soul. It once did. I tried to show whomever whatever, do one more thing, master one more skill, show that I was worthy of friendship or love, but it never really mattered. My foster mom frequently pondered as if she were questioning God’s motives, “Why did God give “you” so much talent?”, as if the “you” (me) were undeserving or as if she were envious – I’m not entirely sure of the reason(s). It took me a while to learn that performance-based contracts are ideal, but performance-based relationships are not. They just leave you tired and empty. I’ve no idea who would have a table awaiting my arrival on this earth, but I know for whom I cherish and hold dear. Maybe that’s what God intended. If we’re all looking for each other, then we’re all at the table.
I’m trying to follow: Is being remebered like being recognized, seen? Whatever it is, I don’t think it can depend on “wholeness”.
And is wholeness the opposite of broken? I do not know anyone who is whole (and intentionally do not assert that as an ” I think”, an opinion. “Whole” as an absolute of a lived human life I’m pretty sure is onr of those myths that has its uses. But. not. here.
So — if you are still eirher curious or agreeing — being broken is not special, or unusual.Nor is it a way to describe a cataclysm that upends a life — unless you are under a missile attack or failed chemotherapy or something. Then you are brolen; you are dead and you are not reading or writing this.
Broken also says little about responsibility or right and wrong. Not until you add in who has power to judge, prescribe punishment and other consequences—which themselves break things, and persons.
If all this sounds terribly abstract, I wrote it after reading Mychal Denzel Smith on accountability — where he chooses to discuss those we consider beyond anything but condemnation: rapists. His book, grounded in his being a Black man in the USA is subtitled Life After The American Dream. A truly great book: Easy to follow, hard (for most) to swallow.