Reflections for a Memorial Service

Reflections for a Memorial Service At the 50th Reunion of the Class of 1960 Brandeis University, May 22, 2010 The Rev. Canon Lance Beizer

One of the concepts in my religious tradition that I most cherish is that of the “Communion of Saints,” which, despite its name, isn’t speaking about those wonderful, though often quirky folks whose names are placed on a special calendar because of their saintliness. Instead it refers to the mass of people who are simply faithful members of their Christian communities – past, present and future. We gather here today in a sense, I think, to honor some of our own “communion of saints,” those members of our class who have already completed their journeys through life.

Each of the great religions of the Book, as Judaism, Christianity and Islam have come to be known, has as a central notion the concept of remembrance. Two months ago, for example, Jews celebrated one of the central observances of that religion, the Passover, which, of course, is a remembrance – of the passage of the Jewish people from their bondage in Egypt to a new life in Israel. In the Christian tradition, the central liturgy each week, the Eucharist, is itself a remembrance – of the one for whom my religion is named. And Muslims also, as they make their personal trek to Mecca, thereby remember the trek of the founder of their religion. As we remember our classmates today, in a significant way we bring those we remember back to life once again – to be present with us in this very ceremony.

I suspect that many, if not all of you, as you have walked the campus, have been remembering those days from so long ago when you walked them as students, and the many people who walked them with you. Of course, memory isn’t always easy, is it? Memory can be a tricky thing, especially from our vantage point on the far side of our allotted threescore and ten. And, of course, much has surely changed in those intervening years. I don’t know whether the changes have complicated your memories of Brandeis as they have mine, but I must admit that, as sharp as some memories are for me, I have been unable to reconstruct exactly where the events I’ve been remembering actually took place. Worse yet, some of the memories involve other people, and I’m not even always sure who they were. As important as the events seemed at the time, with the passage of so many years they often become confused and conflated.

But let’s be clear. However we reconstruct our memories of those events – and the people who were so important to us once, in a profound, though not so very obvious, way they remain important to us today as well. Memories may fade. Indeed, almost inevitably memories fade. They sort of have to, don’t they, or our brains would become as cluttered as the room of one of those people who simply can’t throw anything out, the obsessive hoarders we sometimes hear or read about, 2 trapped in their own apartment or home because the piles have become too high to navigate around or over?

Even though we have discarded or transmogrified those memories from so long ago, however, the people and events that produced them have had a continuing effect upon us, even these many years later. One of the things I remember as a child that brought me the most pleasure – it’s amazing what little things could amuse us as children in those days before television – was skipping flat stones across a pond, to see how many times it could strike the surface and continue on its journey before, inevitably, sinking beneath. The ripples that spiral outward when at last the stone sinks are, I think, a fitting image of what happens with the lives we lead. Whoever we are, however we live our lives, we also produce ripples just as those stones do. And just as the stones’ ripples affect, to a greater or lesser extent, absolutely everything in their path, so also do the ripples we produce with our lives. Everyone our lives touch is affected, no matter how slightly.

So all those who joined with us on our journeys through school on this amazing campus have had their influence upon us. Both directly, as they interacted with us, and indirectly, as those they directly affected cast their own, metaphorical, stones into the pond. Frankly, as I grow ever older, it has been a good reminder to me to try, as best I can, to have a positive influence on the folks I encounter in my journey through life, for they will have their own encounters, and those they touch will have theirs, and so on through many generations, each one, even if only infinitesimally, affected by my initial contact.

Remembering specifics of our friends can be difficult as we look back on our years as students here, but deep down within, at the soul level, there is, then, a form of memory that has continued to influence what sort of person each of has become. And so we gather here to celebrate the lives of those who have gone before us and touched our own lives.

Another image that has some resonance for me is one I encountered some years ago. Picture, if you will, a great quilt, with each patch a person who helps to comprise the fabric of God’s universe. Though transformed by death none simply drops out of the quilt, to leave a gaping hole in it. In God’s world they are always there, even as each one of us also is always part of that fabric, and will continue to be after we also are gone.

I am much comforted by the assurance given me in my scriptures by St. Paul, whose words to the Christian community in Rome should, I think, be as comforting to all of us, whatever our beliefs:

“For I am convinced,” he said, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God….” 3

And so, although I miss our fallen friends, I do truly believe them all safely in God’s loving embrace. As I think about their absence, I close these reflections with a portion of what the Irish theologian, philosopher and marvelous poet, John O’Donohue, has named “A Blessing for Absence”:

May you know that absence is full of tender presence and that nothing is ever lost or forgotten. May the absences in your life be full of eternal echo. May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere which holds the presences that have left your life. May you be generous in your embrace of loss. May the sore of your grief turn into a well of seamless presence. May your compassion reach out to the ones we never hear from and may you have the courage to speak out for the excluded ones. May you become the gracious and passionate subject of your own life….

Now, as we leave this time of remembering our classmates, may we enjoy the time we have left for ourselves, but also may we use that time to seek opportunities to contribute what we can to the lives of the people God places in our path as we continue our own journeys through life. AMEN