Easter VII (Acts 16:16-40)  05/12/2013

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A couple of months ago I decided to dedicate some time to a hobby that has long interested me, and that hobby is the research of my family history. At first thought there was the anticipation of finding recognizable names from the past: colonial patriots, founding mothers and fathers of this country, and other people that streets and schools and parks are named after. However, once the real work of the research was underway I soon discovered that most of my time was spent sorting through old handwritten documents, visiting the town clerks office, and wandering through old cemeteries. I think the slow and methodical process of sifting through old records was the cause of my previous departures from this hobby in times past, but this time around something very different happened to me. I discovered that mixed in with all the hard, cold facts and figures of those old handwritten documents are the many, many fascinating stories of my family. Family research also provides the opportunity to discover information that has long since been hidden away; sometimes quite accidentally and sometimes quite on purpose. The more information I found, the more questions I had, so I gathered up all my information and set out to talk with as many family members as I thought would have even the slightest memory of the family stories of our past. Interestingly, those conversations began to shape a new understanding of the past and, remarkably, a new vision of how the past guides and informs our future. Thomas Merton, a 20th century monk and spiritual guide, once spoke of how memories must be more than simply facts from the past. Merton wrote, “Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not ‘remember’ the here and now, does not ‘remember’ its true identity, is not memory at all. [One] who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia.”[i] Thomas Merton’s insight helps us to realize that memory becomes something far greater when we allow ourselves to move from the idea of simply recalling facts to the living process of remembering and sharing the sacred stories of our lives. Continue reading →