The fourth Harry Potter film is upon us. Another classic battle between good and evil.
Central to the Harry Potter books is the theme of Harry recovering his memory - his personal history - and in so doing realising who he really is and the powers that he has.
Memory is a strange but very important human ability. It creates the substance of our being. There can be no ‘What I Am’ without the memory of ‘What I have been.’
In human evolution, it was the creatures with memory that won over those early creatures with no memory.
It is the foundation of all our deep relationships: shared history; shared memories. How often in our conversations with friends do we start a sentence with “Do you remember?” (It binds us to people of our own age-group. Fireworks yesterday.)
The short-term memory is the most vital and sometimes the most fragile. Sentences begun but unended with ‘what was I saying?’ There is, by the way, a fascinating website called shorttermmemoryloss.com which celebrates at the moment the 60th Anniversary of Housmans Bookshop in the Caledonian Rd by King’s Cross – it’s been the home of the peace movement for these past 60 years. “60 years of peace” it proclaims “but little quiet”. Indeed more have been killed in wars over these past 60 years of peace than in the previous two terrible World Wars.
Remembering where we have been, helps us to make sense of where we are no. So music has no beauty without the memory of what was. The resolution of the chord or the conclusion of the book is meaningless without the retention in your memory of what has gone before.
Long-term memory is even more of an enigma. A cameo appearance of an old friend 35 years ago is there in all its vividness: the flares, the tie, the bicycles on the tow-path with the Sturmy Archer 3-speed gears. But what happened in 1964 when you were in the fourth form? - the entire year is a complete blank. [Of course my older sisters say that if you remember the 60s then you weren’t there?!]
Then there is communal memory, passed on from one generation to another. Two Millennia seems half of the age of the earth. But the age of the earth is in fact about two million times two millennia.
The psychology of historical recall means that 500 years ago has as much relevance to our three score years and ten lives as 500 million years ago. Shakespeare is as alien to us as dinosaurs.
There is another complication. We live in an accelerated culture where the rate of change in so many aspects of our daily lives is always increasing. Young people now suffer from premature nostalgia. The nineties is already ‘retro’ - history. There have been more inventions and changes in these last 60 years of peace than in the previous 5,000 years! The slide-rule that got me through Cambridge engineering is now in the Science museum!
And we all know the experience of looking at old family photos. There is a 17 year old you, in braided jacket with a school prefect’s badge. But how is that you/me? I’m a stranger to myself. Every cell in my body has changed many times since then and half my brain cells have already died - and the other two are feeling queasy.
The Bible and the Church have always placed a strong emphasis on the integration of our memory - commonly owned history - into the present reality. Indeed there can be no present reality without a sense of what was. The postmodern assertion that yesterday is another country, is a denial of the Christian view of personhood and Heilsgeschichte - Salvation History – which shapes our present.
These vestments, the liturgy, the music, the art and symbols of recent and long past centuries - these all give greater reality to the ‘now’.
Why has Remembrance Day become arguably of greater significance in the last decade than, say, in the 60s and 70s? There were calls for its abolition back then.
Many of us now have no direct memories of the world wars, yet the act of remembrance - the liturgy at the Cenotaph, the poppies, the veterans, the engraved walls, the war poems - all these give substance to the reality of the war dead, and a poignancy to the new struggles with terrorism and the daily casualties in Iraq or the latest location of indiscriminate violence.
These yearly community remembrances; the counting of the decades of uneasy peace; these 60 years of nervous optimism that we will never fall into another world-wide conflagration – these ceremonies of thankfulness and hope. They help to give expression to our inner longings for peace and a better society; for an end to violence and hatred. They are a shared history, which guides us in shaping the present.
Of course there are cultures whose communal remembering is rooted in vengeance and hatred which prolongs the relentless cycle of bloodshed. This sort of remembering must be expunged if the culture is to survive.
Well few of us now have direct experience of war, but of course none of us have direct and experiential memories of the man Christ Jesus; who lived and died and rose again these two millennia past - 50 generations ago. Yet we believe that our remembering of this man, deeply affects our present and future.
Catherine Pickstock at Cambridge wrote a startling but difficult book a couple of years ago entitled After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy. It is an attack on the floating, postmodern self, detached from history and memory. She wrote of this service, the mass:
“… the worshipper’s forward journey is precisely its journey towards memory: the occasion of our meeting God is our memory of him.” (p.231)“Do this” says Jesus, “in remembrance of me.”
I remember, as a young teacher, standing in the memorial cloister of Lancing College at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 32 years ago.
And looking at the 500 young men and masters around me, and then at the 500 names etched in the cold November walls in front of us. The lesson needed no words of explanation.
Today we remember and honour the war dead. We give thanks for their sacrifice and pray to God that we will not let such carnage happen again. It is Remembrance Sunday. Our communal memory encourages us to work for a better present reality – and if we remember rightly, it brings that reality into being.
Which is why for Christians every Sunday is Remembrance Sunday. Our communal memory allows God to make himself a reality among us in bread and wine and fellowship.
So, a deep understanding, a deep sense of who we are; what we are doing on this war-riven planet; why our relationships have any value; how the suffering and death of God in Christ nearly two thousand years ago affect us today; the conviction that the Risen Lord is with us now, and that we will be with him and all those who have gone before; and the hope that 60 years of peace will lead to that time when the lion will lie down with the lamb, and they will study war no more…
…this is all bound up in the profound utterance of our Lord which we and the church universal repeat in every hour, of every day, of every century:
“Do this in remembrance of me.” 1 Cor 11.24
