“There’s a great mystery in that cemetery, even deeper than the painful or tragic events that populated it. Inside its stone walls are the citizens of my town: they built the stores and mapped out the roads, put up electric lights, founded the hospital, and organized the public library. A few probably lived in my home at one time. They have made my life possible in more ways than I can count, yet we are entire strangers. . . . I do not take these silent neighbors for granted either. Sometimes, when all of the library staff have gone home, the lights are off, and I’m working alone at my desk, I think about them . . . . But most of the time, my feeling is more sadness than fear. It is hard to think about people who have lived full and eventful lives, only to end up as a faded name on a monument; it is even harder to realize that this will eventually happen to me and to all the people I love. My library shelves are full of forgotten books written by unknown people. It is an amazing fact, one that I sometimes contemplate with awe, that all of these books are connections with people now on the other side of mystery, surviving only as a name on a tattered binding. That’s one reason why I sometimes pause and say their names out loud, just to give the universe a chance to hear an old and beloved combination of words one more time. (pp. 100-101)” HistoryBooksCemeteries Book:The Spiritual Practice of Remembering Source: The Spiritual Practice of Remembering
“Christian remembering is not a set of duties or list of skills to master–it is an intention, one that begins with the simple grace of noticing. Once you begin to look, the past is everywhere; the roads that our ancestors built and the trees they planted, their songs and books and pictures and monuments. . . . Their inventions make us more comfortable on a hot day and happier when the weather gets cold. Their tastes and style, their sense of order and place, define our surroundings. Whether we realize it or not, we are living in a world they built and are bound to their decisions–as our children and their children’s children will be to ours. (pp. 128-129)” PastRememberingNoticing People Book:The Spiritual Practice of Remembering Source: The Spiritual Practice of Remembering