Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Living Forward, Understanding Backwards



I'm sitting at home today, working from home, listening to records I haven't listened to for 40 years. My daughter has never seen records, nor seen me listen to them. But she knows some of the songs which I have sung to her from Cat Stevens and Simon and Garfunkel. If you are my age or older, you know the sweet sound of a record, on a turntable, with hisses and pops and a certain "physicality to it all", not a digital download.
The songs bring back memories. Songs and smells, like almost nothing else, have the power to evoke the past. I can see myself, my room, the house where I lived 40 years ago as Joni Mitchell sings on the record above.
As human beings, we live forward. But we understand backward....its true with faith too. Events take on different meaning(s) as we age.
I suppose that is grace, that meaning can change, and that meaning can come to us over all those years, through the gift of memory, through the gift of the physicality of the world.
Pastor Jeff

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