Remember, Remember…

“Remember, remember the 5^th of November”: I must admit I am pretty hazy about how the rest of the line goes.  I suppose that is because I did not grow up in England and therefore did not have the annual experience of remembering Guy Fawkes (we just happily celebrated Halloween, but that’s another story).

November is certainly a month for remembering things and our memories are essential to who we are, both individually and as a people.

What are your earliest memories?  Many of mine are to do with Church, school and family.  I can remember one of my early, pre-school-age, birthday parties where I had to sit separately from the guests because I had contracted measles.  I can recall Father Christmas arriving at for school and Sunday school Christmas parties – what a busy man.

Unsurprisingly, faith, education and family are important to me as an adult, for these are the things I remember so many years later and these in turn are memories that contribute to the sort of person that I am these days.

We all have personal memories that we hang unto or which for some reason persist with us through the years.  November, however, is month not just for personal memories but a month for ‘instructed’ memories.  These are the ‘memories’ for which we have no personal recollection and indeed for which we could not have any recollection.  They are memories of events from times before we were even born but which our family, our community, our Church, our society believe are important or even essential to our development and identity.

So, a government and a nation, determined to remain Protestant, and fearful of Catholicism, replayed with the aid of fireworks and bonfires, the failure of a conspiracy to blow up parliament and the subsequent execution of those deemed to be traitors.  Nowadays, in happier political and religious times (at least amongst previously warring Christian factions) fewer and fewer ‘guys’ are placed on the bonfire and people just enjoy the spectacle of the fireworks, possibly as part of a charitable fund raising event rather than as a thanksgiving for the safety of ever-popular parliamentarians.

In Churches, November, like other months is a month of instructed memories.  We continue to remember Jesus, by gathering to hear the stories of his birth, life, death and resurrection.  We also remember Jesus and his significance for us, by acting out the meal he shared with disciples just prior to his arrest and death and pondering its significance for us all.  When we get to December many of us will be remembering the birth of Jesus, his incarnation, not only through familiar readings and special songs but also through acting it out in nativity plays.  As far as remembering and November goes, however, the great act of remembrance, whilst it involves Churches, goes more widely than that.

Though for many people in our society remembrance of war involves strong personal memories for the majority of people this just can’t be the case.  Either we are too young to remember the two World Wars which affected everyone in the country at the time or we are not part of the smaller segment of the nation involved in current conflicts, such as the one in Afghanistan.  For most of us, instructed memory is the only type available.  So, we are encouraged into memorial actions, buying a poppy to display on our clothing (some also choosing to remember civilian deaths and the call to peace making through wearing a white poppy).  There will be parades, special religious services, television programmes and moments of shared silence; all opportunities for ‘instruction’ in the content and importance of the things we remember together.

I hope that this month is a time of positive memories for you, even if some of these are sad ones.  I hope this is true whether such memories are personal or ‘instructed’, individual or shared.  It is important to remember.

Trevor

This entry was posted on 26/10/2011 at 05:31 pm and is filed under Uncategorised. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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