I remember; you remember; we remember...

-Years later, on the road to healing and wholeness, a journey which will never end he wrote:
I give thanks to God for always helping me to see the brighter side of everything. Even in the darkest time of my life when I almost gave up and thought life was over. God made me realize and see that I have a reason to live a life guided by him.
I have never met him; but I will never forget him; never forget his smiling, joyful face on the back cover of his book A LONG WAY GONE --a book so horrific I could barely read it.
As a boy of 13 his family had been killed by the rebel army, and he became caught up in civil war that shattered Sierra leone; caught between army soldiers and rebel soldiers with neither home nor safety nor shelter nor adult guidance; a young boy adrift in a world torn by violence.
He took up with the Army who provided food and protection from the other who had killed his family. It was that or be killed and at 13, how do you choose?
And after food and shelter he was given training..with an AK 47 .
And then he was given little white pills and brown-brown --cocaine/gun powder -- and sent out to kill or be killed.
He had seen the deaths of his mother and sister; he had seen bloated and mutilated corpses; now he saw his friends killed at his side; now saw and participated in violence no human, let alone child, should either witness or participate in. He lived a drugged out horrific life until the civil war ended and he became involved in lenghty and difficult rehab through UNICEF. And because of God’s grace, his own will and determination, and the help of many mentors who saw his gifts, he came to the United States, finished high school and college and now he speaks around the world--from churches to the UN to the Marine corp--about child soldiers, about working for peace among all peoples. He wrote;
If we think of the future positively, our actions towards that future will be positive. Everyone can make a difference. You don’t have to be rich or famous to do so. If one person can change the way they interact with other people, no matter who they are or where they are from, that makes a big difference. ...--I remember Ishmael Beah.
One thing was a guarantee. whenever you came into her presence, whether she was in her kitchen cooking, at the table playing dominos, or in bed in the nursing home, she always made you feel welcome and loved and special--even though in her later years, she was often in pain.
She didn’t have a mean bone in her body, and never did a mean word pass her lips. She raised her children with care and love and devotion; she loved all her grand and great grand children unequivocally; was devoted to her husband, served her church, and shared her talents as a quilter, and cook. She had a beautiful smile and a sweet laugh. To me she was a woman who encouraged and supported and nurtured.
Her cards to us always came with a kind note. In fact, still posted on my bulletin board is the anniversary card she sent us several years ago
A capable woman, who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. ..a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised..Give her a share of the fruit of her hands, and let her works priaise her... Proverbs 31-- I remember Ivy Ovitt

If there was something to be done--for the church, for his neighbors, for the school- he was there to help, though he balked at rummage sales--that was for the women he thought.He was the little man who helped.
Few if any people knew that over the years he spent most of the little money he had sponsoring countless children through various agencies around the world; the lives of at least 20 children are a little better life because of his generosity and sense of Christian mission.
He had few material possessions, but many treasures-- mostly cards and notes and prayers from caring people whose lives he had touched across the northeast. Every Easter he would buy a lily to, as he said, “remember the buddies I lost on Okinawa.” That event was long past, but it was still part of his memory and had informed the rest of his life.
He served in WWII but he hated war; he hated violence; he just couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. Every week, when Chad D. was in Afghanistan, he would be sure to ask Paula how he was doing; how she was doing.
and they shall beat their swords in to plow shares and their spears into pruning hooks. Isaiah 2: 4 I remember Marvin Nelson

We never knew his name; but we knew he had to go to work; machete in hand, he was walking to the spot where the truck would pick up him and his companeros and take them to the banana plantation where he would spend the day cutting bananas that would undoubtedly end up in some US market.
Though his clothes were mud-caked, his hands and face were clean.
And his face,I remember his face, brown, rimmed with straight, shiny black hair,contorted with a pain he was trying to conceal.
On his leg was an ugly and dirty wound, probably from his machete.
We stood around as Vicki one of the doctors on our trip to Honduras extracted a bar of elegant pink soap from her pack and soaped up and washed his leg with her hands with the stagnant water of a horse fountain She wept as he left, because she knew the depth of his pain, and the futility of her gesture; and yet, he was thankful. -Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Matthew 25: 40
--I remember that unknown compesino in the mtns of Honduras.

Who would we be without our memories??? Our individual memories and our collective memories shape our values and attitudes, inform our understanding of our world, and connect us with the traditions of the past.
All the great secular holidays, all the great religious holidays are times of remembrance, times when we think about and reflect on the events and the people that have formed our consciousness as family--as community-- as country-- as faith group
All the great secular holidays, all the great religious holidays are moments in time when the past memories become real once more, and are for a brief moment more important than the immediate present
our shared memories, and our shared heritage create among us an unbreakable bond that neither time nor human activity can destroy.
--where is self without memory; without memories of the past events and places and people to shape our present and inform our future we are creatures adrift in time.
some memories perhaps we would rather neither have nor recall--memories of sadnesses, past behaviors, trauma, -
-mmy mother never spoke of her childhood; my father in law, along with many of his generation, rarely if ever spoke of his world war 2 experiences. and similarly many will not speak about Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq -but
-even if we choose to dismiss those memories, bury them deep in our consciousness, forget them, hide them. they shape our present reality in how they direct our life choices, our sense of self, of community;
Our memories help define us; our memories anchor us in reality. It was important for Ralph Ellsworth to recount how life on the Fletcher Road had changed in the 80 some odd years he had lived in the same house on the same farm; and it was important for me/for his family/for the community to hear those stories.
Memories un-shared are dust in the closets of our mind; memories unshared isolate us from the each other and from our common past.
Memories shared create a commonality of purpose and culture of value and meaning. And so it is good and necessary to come together to remember the remembering together forges a community linked by a shared past. We cannot think about where we wish to go unless we can know and remember where we have been.
Unless we remember and understand and examine the memories of our collective past-- as family, faith community, nation-- we cannot work toward a vital and hopeful future. So we come together--at picnics and parades and other gatherings--to remember the wars; remember the loss; and with hope and trust, move on into a future where those memories can become the building blocks to a more peaceful world.