My friend Ed came over to my house on Wednesday, to eat roast chicken and drink wine and laugh. I’ve known Ed for a long while and the talk was full of remembering other evenings, other friends and other dinners.
Food is good like that. Tom knows that feasting pricks the memory such that one meal can stand for a whole lifetime of family, friendship and tradition.
A play can do the same, Maisie, as we watch a story unfold that speaks to our own.
Music too. Music especially. No one knows better (or is probably more grateful) than Michael or Rod that there is nothing like a song for evoking a particular time and place, a person, a kiss or a goodbye.
But it’s not only our own memories that make us; it’s also other people’s. We’ve all experienced the warmth of being remembered by someone we met long ago. And I reckon most of us know how crushing it is for our name to be the one forgotten, to be no one’s memory; to be made nothing.
I fear that I forget people way too easily, that I hide behind the excuse of being terrible with names. And I fear it’s not kind.
There’s a lot of remembering in the Bible.
Of course, because it’s a book about human people there’s plenty of moaning about modern times and remembering the good old days.
But more than anything, though, the voices in the bible, like ours, want to be remembered – in suffering and desolation, as well as in rejoicing and delight. They want to be remembered by God.
And the amazing thing is, God does remember. God remembers his promises. God remembers that she loves us. God remembers that he is compassionate. God remembers that we are hers to be cared for.
We love it when we are remembered because it draws us in and includes us in someone else’s life. And in that acknowledgment of shared experience, it gives us value.
I wonder sometimes whether memory isn’t the simplest and best way of all to be kind. To remember someone. To put all those stored memories to use in letting someone know they mean something. There is mercy in remembering, and kindness. Now I just need to remember to be better at it.
Another musical Friday, with Michael Bublé and Rod Stewart, along with Tom Parker Bowles and Maisie Williams. Rod Stewart and Michael Bublé sang a duet. It was weird.
The header image is a detail from A Philosopher holding a Mirror by Jusepe de Ribera, oil on canvas, c.1630 (private collection). Chosen because Ed is a Ribera scholar.