Threads of the past and future
Our obligation, our challenge, and our joy is to make space for every family and friend circle, every community, to weave its story from past to present to future, in peace and safety.
There is so much happening on the public stage - world politics, courtroom encounters, judicial processes, ongoing war, threats of violence, and more. And so much in our daily lives, too; the joys and sorrows that accumulate over a lifetime.
I spent much of today (Saturday) going through the boxes of photos, papers, and mementos that threatened to overwhelm one of our closets, and coming face to face with moments in my past. So this week’s reflection is more personal. It’s about how the past threads its way through the present and future, and builds an ever-changing story of ourselves.
Baby pictures (my own, my siblings, my parents) speak of the essential vulnerability of newly created humans. Professional portraits show us at our best, in soft focus and pressed collars. Candid snapshots catch us with bad skin, bad hair, expressions of boredom or frustration; and they capture beauty in spontaneous smiles and unselfconscious gazes, reflections in our eyes of loved ones just out of frame.
One photo I found included me with four or five college friends, all young women, on a ferry going somewhere. Our heads are tossed back in raucous laughter. Joy radiates from the four-by-six glossy paper. I remember the names of most of them, but not the occasion. And I have no idea who took the picture.
Then there are the childhood papers, the lonely letters written by a five or six year old longing for something, the terrible teenage song lyrics, the hilarious stories about butterflies eating corn. (Do they? Apparently in kindergarten I thought so.) Notes from traveling parents, birthday cards, newspaper clippings. My father’s membership card for the Brotherhood of Magicians, which he cherished. And of course the art, colored sketches, stick figures, signed masterpieces of smeared crayon or pencil.
When I think of the days ahead, the choices we will be asked to make, the commitments we will be called upon to fulfill, the risks of this perilous time, I wonder what the people in those old photos were thinking about their days. About their choices and commitments, their dangers and hopes. About how well they faced it all, or chose not to.
Lots of what I found will wind up cast away, recycled or tossed, no longer meaningful. What’s left might last long enough to help tell the story of who we are, this little circle of family and friends, and how we kept body and soul together through hard times and good times.
Our obligation, our challenge, and our joy is to make space for every family and friend circle, every community, to weave its story from past to present to future, in peace and safety.
Thank you for being part of my circle.