Remembrance

We would like to be remembered in some way, especially by our families, but even in larger scope than is commonly the case.  A motivation of Abraham Lincoln was that he wanted to achieve something to be remembered.  Persons with this idealism tend to think futurely, and in some context that has promise for their mortal hope.  One finds the urge in the artist, writer, leader, inventor, but also in the common person, perhaps with reduced expectations or pride.  Henry James, of the eminent James family in America at the turn of the twentieth century, wanted an: affluence of favor but without the taint of popularity. The feeling appears to have been so strong among the James personages, that each, except for a sister, seemed to want to have a bit more of the favor at a bit higher level than others.  They knew that the business of celebrity was passing, and that it had an underlying shallowness about it that would actually reduce the meaning of remembrance as a worthy aspiration.  The family was quite protective of the reputation of the family, so to monitor even the review of researchers of the papers left by family members.  This may have contributed to the belief of some analysts that Henry was a closet homosexual.  Careful scholarship suggests that the assertion is literary gossip, violating a devoted author’s orientation.  Some critics were offended that Henry had violated his Americanism, so prostituted his professionalism to British context.  Such is the remembrance that the world affords to some deserving of clearer, better and more objective reporting. 

It has been announced (January, 2012) through the media publicly that the world population of human beings has passed the seven billion mark, and growing.  Of that number no more than a handful will be remembered a century from now.  A few more will be called up from time to time in library sources, but likely no more will be held in memory than in the current era.  The odds that the person reading this sentence will be remembered by his or her descendants or others are quite low.  Apparently animals do not think about such things.  Mankind does.  We dislike being held ln history as ciphers only.

My wife died on January 15, 2001.  On the date from year to year, one of my children, representing all the siblings and family, may go with me to stand at her grave site for a few minutes – or I go alone.  We want to remember her.  She lived for us, served us, yearned for us, prayed for us, modeled her life for us, supported worthy efforts to give comfort to others.  That she was not perfect goes without saying.  No one is perfect in earthly context, but we knew that her light far outshone any darkness.  She had the will to love, and find what she could be and do to advance the force of that virtue and light from God.  Her number one thought was that she be remembered of God, and she remembered him.  I haven’t the slightest doubt that aspiration of prayer has occurred, initiated for sublime application just after her final breath.  I watched that breath.

A man was hanging from a cross.  At first he was angry, and railed at the person on the cross beside him as though that dying person was somehow responsible for the occasion – probably moving up the execution date, that hurried his own death.  Excruciating pain, losing control of breathing cycles, seeing the massive crowd centered on the central person of three cross executions, he realized something.  Crude and angry persons standing at ground level, perhaps rough in the soldiers and refined in the leaders, seemed more repellent than the crosses.  He fell into conversation with the person at center – at last calling him Lord.  He then revealed that deep feeling of mankind – to be remembered.  He did not want to be remembered as a malefactor.  Lord, remember me for something, perhaps to be remembered for the wisdom of confession and to have been wise enough to ask forgiveness.   He was immediately assured, not to be delivered from death, but even better: Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.  It might have had the impression that you won’t have to wait until I come into my kingdom, but today you will be remembered.  That memory will never be lost.  His memory is assured, for the penitent malefactor, or any other status we choose. The point is made.  We want to be remembered.  That desire is a tentative evidence of the largest of all possibilities that I will be remembered by God in meaning for life in Christ to immortality.