Friends In The Lord

Remembering and Gratitude

Each of us spends some time in our day remembering and thinking back over past events. Sometimes we go back to our own personal experiences; other times it is to past events long before our time which still have meaning for us. This summer, I have been reading a history of Rome from one thousand BC to the year one, for example. Historical research is one great act of remembering.

One of our main religious activities, too, is remembering. Johann Baptist Metz called the Jesus Event our most dangerous memory. This is a memory we consciously evoke at each Eucharist. Our act and expression of gratitude is connected to our remembering. Certain memories should not go away, should not be repressed, but should be always kept alive, as disturbing as they are. It is not living in the past; it is being in the present with and the gracious embrace of our past.

Exeter Cathedral in Devon in South West England

I share with you these images from last Easter. This beautiful church is Exeter Cathedral in Devon in South West England. Photos, too, are little capsules of time-past and help feed our memory. This church embodies some of the history of Christianity in England: the great architectural expressions of faith from the middle ages, the reform and the break with Roman Catholicism, the decline and then rebirth of Patristic Christianity. This church is a glorious space to the glory of God.

General John Graves Simcoe

To the right of the choir in the ambulatory isle I came upon this memorial to General John Graves Simcoe. His wall plaque is sided with a British soldier from the eighteenth century and a native North American, possibly modeled on the people who possessed Ontario before the British and the French came here. A bust of Simcoe’s likeness is carved in marble. He was the founder of Toronto, which he named York in 1793, among the many other things that he did in the early days of Ontario. He has not been forgotten in Exeter Cathedral, by his family or the Heritage Department of the Province of Ontario.  He has not been entirely forgotten in Ontario; we have a lake and a few other things named after him. We have forgotten most of what he lived for, the struggles he had, the hardships and triumphs of the time.

All this quiet reflection seems some distance away from the commotion of the G20 meetings. But each plays its part in our weaving together the strands from history which inform our present realities. Our gratitude to God for our very being is rooted in particular times and places.