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This week has been one of reconnecting with people I haven’t spoken to for varying periods of time. It might be a text, an email, or sometimes a social media message. Since I stopped using social media on a regular basis, I have lost touch with some folks, the biggest loss associated with stepping away from those media. That has made these points of contact fun and refreshing. It’s been an opportunity to reflect on where I’ve been, and who has been a part of shaping my life, and there are many more people on that list than I might normally name at first.
As we move from moment to moment in life, people come and go, as we do. Relocating geographically speeds that process up a bit. People who stay in one place for a long time, or even a lifetime, have the same effect, but moving to a new community certainly speeds up that process. When we don’t see someone for a while, it is easy for them to be out of mind, which is different than forgetting them. The difference is whether we can recall the person given the proper prompt. Anyone who has looked at an old yearbook knows that reality. There are hundreds of faces I used to recognize but could never name off the top of my head until I glance at their forever 17-year-old self, at which point I remember classes, musicals, bus stops, and a host of other memories that stay quietly under some kind of memory lock and key until that lock is sprung.
In 2020, I wrote a Lenten devotional that we would use in the parish, though I think we only had one session before the world shut down, and a small group that continued online. Over the course of the season, we reflected on our lives, what we did or didn’t do, who was in our lives, and ultimately came to a place of thanksgiving for all the things that made us who we are, and the abiding presence of God through all of it. It is the same sentiment I have included in prayers for newlyweds on their wedding day, acknowledging the tapestry of their new lives, formed from the threads of the many relationships they each have, now woven together in a new way.
God creates us for relationship and community, apart from a very small number of persons called to spiritual eremitism, people we call hermits (same root word in Greek). Our tradition stresses this in a number of ways, but it is subtly expressed in things like our Book of Common Prayer and our focus on corporate worship. We are a corpus – a body of disparate parts, called together to pray in common. Common and community (same Latin root) are two aspects of what we do in the church: gathering as a body and holding things in common. Even aspects of our own lives are not entirely our own, because we share them with others.
About a decade ago, the pop band AJR released a song called “Netflix Trip.” The lead singer sings about how a television show helps him remember where he’s been, life moments that he can relate to seasons, episodes, and characters of “The Office,” although they never name the show. When I first heard the song, I thought it was kind of funny, but it’s quite poignant as I’ve listened to it over the years. The chorus asks, “Who am I to tell you who I am?” There are other ways to know who we are, as it turns out. At the end of the song, he sings, “Who I am is in these episodes, so don’t you tell me that it’s [The Office] just a show.” Episodes on a sitcom are tied to episodes in a young man’s life, and it’s really the life episodes that tell the story. The show is just the key to unlock their memories.
For me, it’s not a sitcom, it’s the Church. That’s the constant throughout my life that seems to unlock all sorts of things, reminding me who I am in the process and of God’s companionship along the way. There are many moments in my life that connect to my life of faith, and many people who were important and represented that Body of Christ for me in tangible ways. Not everyone in my life, nor every moment, is church-related, but I’m on something like season forty of the church’s ongoing presence in my life. Thank goodness it’s just a hair longer than The Simpsons, which is nearly that old, although that show has some memories attached to it as well.
Today I’m continuing to give thanks for the people, the family, the friends, the mentors, the teachers, the people who, at times, were barely strangers, but shaped me along the way. I’m remembering the experiences, good and bad, affirming and heartbreaking, that have also shaped me. I don’t know how much of that, people or events, was divinely inspired, but the presence of the divine is unmistakable, regardless. Who are those people in your life? What are the events that formed you? Who and what holds the keys to unlock those memories? Can you hear the love for who you are today, no matter what rises from the depths of memory?
So, who are we? How are we connected with others? How did we get here? I hope that for all of us, the net result of such reflection is joy and gratitude, even if all the episodes don’t fit those categories cleanly. We’re still here, with God, and God is good, my friends.
