Ever since moving to Indiana I have enjoyed the exquisite beauty that comes during the season of spring. I especially enjoy the color and fragrance of lilac bushes which adorn so many yards and dot our countryside. Walt Whitman is one of my favorite poets, and I remember well from high school his poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” But because we did not have lilacs in South Carolina (at least around where I lived), I could not understand the impact of lilacs on Whitman as he wrote this poem.
I now have some experience with the beauty and aroma of lilacs. And so when I read a slim volume by one of my favorite theologians, Rubem Alves, which begins with the memory of a lilac bush planted by him and his father, I could appreciate what he was saying. Alves points out that to strangers his lilac bush is no different from any other lilac bush on the face of the earth. But because this lilac bush came from his father who is now dead, it is as though strands of memory come from the bush which remind Alves of someone who is no longer present. No one else sees or feels these threads. The “longing remembrance” resulting from Alves’ communion with this bush is special only to him.
We all have the equivalent of this lilac bush in our own lives—perhaps aromas, sounds, places, dolls, photographs, toys, tools, melodies, or voices. As Alves says, “a lovely thing, this: that there should be things that are more than things, things that make us remember.” Longing remembrance occurs when there is love and absence. We have loved someone, and our hearts ache for the presence of this special person. We experience joy and sorrow, pain and thanksgiving, laughter and tears when we are gifted with longing remembrance.
Today is Memorial Day, a time when we remember those we have loved and whose absence we keenly feel. A flood of conflicting emotions may sweep over us. As we experience longing remembrance with our equivalent of Alves’ lilac bush, maybe it will help to be aware that God also remembers. But the difference between our memory and that of God is that all of time (past, present, and future) is present in God. Nothing and no one is lost with or to God. God’s memory heals, redeems, reconciles, affirms, and fulfills. I take great comfort in believing that all those I have loved and who now are available to me only in my memory are present to God. All they ever were and all they ever will be are kept sacred by God. Nothing is lost, not even my little story, for as God says, “Can a woman forget her nursing child or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. You are continually before me.” (Isaiah 49:15-16)
May your Memorial Day be gifted with the sacrament of longing remembrance, and may your joy be full as you give thanks for a God whose memory is alive and well—as are all those you have loved and lost.
