I would like to say that my current state of mind is a result of the season, but that would be an excuse. The first hint of fall has just arrived in the Mid-Atlantic region — summer held tight until just yesterday, the grass continued to grow, only the maple leaves show that hint of orange, and some of the flowers began to bloom again after the desperate heat of August.  Meteorological fall may have been here, but the weather had not caught up — no leaves falling, no crisp, cool air, until today, that is.

And yet, despite the lack of atmospheric cues, the wistfulness that many associate with the Fall of the year was upon me long before the weather caught up.  I cannot escape it in September for so many reasons — my own diagnosis and surgery, the loss of a mentor, the loss of a beloved furry companion.  My body and my spirit remember all these things, in great glory and sometimes in great pain.  I remember most as each anniversary passes again and again like a silent wind, the feelings and the events dimmed and transformed by time, and yet, never erased.

While reading something for a class, I encountered a phrase that I have not been able to put down.  Maria Harris, the author of Fashion Me a People and other works about what it means to pass on our faith to others in a world that fights against that transmission, wrote these words that describe what I feel about these days, words that convey their meaning better than any I have yet assembled — that in my wistfulness, I am practicing “the priestly act of remembering (67).”  I like that phrase, it brings me a kind of comfort, that my time spent looking back and feeling and holding things past is not a failure to move on, but instead, the very act of healing itself.  For, as I believe and as I experience, there is no healing without this “priestly,” or, in my words, holy act.

I am more than certain that I read this phrase differently than many.  I do not take the word “priestly” to refer to only those who are ordained.  Years ago, when I became a Baptist, I did so, most importantly, because of their stated doctrine of the priesthood of all Believers.  And now, at this time in my life, I did not become an Episcopalian because of my love of liturgy.  I became a confirmed member of the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement because of the commitment in that liturgy and in many people that I meet to the ministry of the baptized, another set of words that reminds us that we are all called to minister with one another and to the world that we call home.

And so, it is with no guilt at all that I read Harris’ phrase, that call to remember in all holiness, not as the responsibility of someone with a collar, but as my very own responsibility.  It is my responsibility to remember, to cherish, to heal, and to share that healing with any who seek it.

When I say to you that a few days ago marked the fifth anniversary of a surgery that saved my life, many things are happening and many things are not happening.  Let’s start with the “not happening” list.  I am not seeking sympathy.  I am not feeling sorry for myself.  I am not experiencing fear and regret.   And most of all, I am not looking with fear to the future.   When I speak of this anniversary, or any other anniversary, I am standing before you with one thought in the past, yes, but another in the present, as someone who has walked a journey of transformation, who has experienced and continues to experience new understandings of what it means to heal and be healed, and what it means to choose life, again and again and again.  And at that same moment, I stand before you as a person of the future, a person who possesses a sense of hope created from lived experience, a kind of hope that says yes to life and transformation, no matter what that future might bring.

Indeed, when we worship together, when we teach the faith, we together participate in a priestly act of remembering that honors our life together and the lives and teachings of the great cloud of witnesses that have come before.  That is not all that happens in these moments, although our inability to perceive more than this is what sometimes invites the labels “reactionary” and “out-of-touch” that our culture wants desperately to apply to the body of faith.  When we are at our best, in these precious moments, we perform an act of translation that holds in our embrace the things and people and events remembered, and simultaneously renders the love created in that remembering as a gift for the now, and to the future.

Yes, that is what I said.  An act of translation.  Our remembering is only powerful when it has movement, when it propels us into an act of creation.  Then, and only then, does that priestly act of remembering, that holy attention to the nuts and bolts of who we are and we are called to be — only then does remembering become an act of healing.

Today, and for the past many weeks, our national airwaves have been filled with stories of rape and sexual abuse and other horrendous acts of one human against the dignity of another.  Today will be another difficult day for me, as for many brave and strong people I know.  There is much around us to trigger a less-than-holy act of remembering, moments of pain and moments of fear deep in our bodies instead of moments of healing.  But if, in the face of it all, this day and every day, we can together choose to love and learn and live, we have hope.  The world has hope.  And we live to learn another day.

And so, today, I will remember, my friends, all that I am and all that my life has been. I hope that you too, can have a holy remembering of even the most painful times, and heal as much as you can, if you can. And no matter what, know that you are not alone.