Re-membering

“My great-great-grandmother, great-grandmother, grandmother, mother are all alive for me because they are part of my story.  My children and grandchildren and I tell stories about Hugh, my husband.  We laugh and we remember–re-member.  I tell stories about my friend, the theologian Canon Tallis, who was far more than my spiritual director, with whom I had one of those wonders, a spiritual friendship.  I do not believe that these stories are their immortality–that is something quite different.  But remembering their stories is the best way I know to have them remain part of my mortal life.  And I need them to be part of me, while at the same time I am quite willing for them all to be doing whatever it is that God has in mind for them to do.  Can those who are part of that great cloud of witnesses which has gone before us be in two places at once?  I believe that they can, just as Jesus could, after the Resurrection.”

-Madeleine L’Engle, Glimpses of Grace

Happy birthday, Dad.  We planted some blackberry bushes in the backyard for you today.  We miss you and we love you.  Pray for us!