Today, the 75th anniversary of VE Day, has been a day filled with memories: with socially distant celebrations and homemade bunting, and friends posting photos on social media of parents and grandparents, young and good-looking in their uniforms and 1940s austerity-defying style. There have, of course, been fervent prayers for ongoing peace, and veterans and others recalling their experiences of war, their relief at its end and all those who died.
I'm not sure exactly how my parents would have spent this day. My teenage mother was in chaotic, weary, newly liberated Italy, in the same region where Mussolini had been assassinated less than two weeks earlier. My father, approaching his 19th birthday, was in a German labour camp, full of young men from Nazi-occupied countries: as he could speak English - having lived in London as a boy - the American army who liberated them employed him as an interpreter, to help with the other Italian displaced persons. This delayed his own repatriation, but he would always fondly recount how for a few months, after years of acute food shortages and German starvation rations, he was able to fill himself with nutritious, fattening meals, courtesy of the US Army and their solicitous Italian-American cook.
Memories, of course, are made of such small details. In the midst of world-defining events we recall, not the huge and momentous, but the seemingly small, trivial even, and ordinary: the things and people which, at the time, mattered most to us, and made the greatest difference to how we lived through - maybe even survived - the experience. I imagine that, in decades to come, our memories of the pandemic will be similar: there will undoubtedly be food, but also, for many, kindness and connection, despite our isolation.
Today Facebook reminded me of other memories; or rather, of one, very precious one, in particular. Four years ago I was in Joigny, and posted this photo, with the caption: So this is where I spent my afternoon, praying, walking and - yes - taking photos. Just me, God, and the birds, bees and butterflies, up, up and further up above the world...
And in remembering that mystical, magical moment I recall, too, my realisation, as I stood and surveyed the town below, that the middle row of these vines stretched down in an almost straight line to where Sophie's house nestled among the closely-packed rooftops just below the church. And my sense, as I squinted and scanned the horizon, that the line didn't end there, at her house, but stretched beyond, across the Yonne and the fields and hills and far, far away, into infinity.
And with this remembrance, and an awareness that it's the anniversary of the night in 1373 when Julian of Norwich received her revelations of divine love, I also recalled her concluding words. Summing up everything she had been shown, she stated that love was God's meaning; and she ended with these words, which speak of a line which is Love, with no beginning or end, and stretching into infinity...
And I saw with absolute certainty that before God made us he loved us, and that this love never slackened, nor ever will. In this love he has done all his works, in this love he has made all things for our benefit, and in this love we shall live forever. Because of our creation we had a beginning, but the love with which he made us never had a beginning; in was in this love that we had our beginning. All this we shall see in God, for ever more.
I'm not sure exactly how my parents would have spent this day. My teenage mother was in chaotic, weary, newly liberated Italy, in the same region where Mussolini had been assassinated less than two weeks earlier. My father, approaching his 19th birthday, was in a German labour camp, full of young men from Nazi-occupied countries: as he could speak English - having lived in London as a boy - the American army who liberated them employed him as an interpreter, to help with the other Italian displaced persons. This delayed his own repatriation, but he would always fondly recount how for a few months, after years of acute food shortages and German starvation rations, he was able to fill himself with nutritious, fattening meals, courtesy of the US Army and their solicitous Italian-American cook.
Memories, of course, are made of such small details. In the midst of world-defining events we recall, not the huge and momentous, but the seemingly small, trivial even, and ordinary: the things and people which, at the time, mattered most to us, and made the greatest difference to how we lived through - maybe even survived - the experience. I imagine that, in decades to come, our memories of the pandemic will be similar: there will undoubtedly be food, but also, for many, kindness and connection, despite our isolation.
Today Facebook reminded me of other memories; or rather, of one, very precious one, in particular. Four years ago I was in Joigny, and posted this photo, with the caption: So this is where I spent my afternoon, praying, walking and - yes - taking photos. Just me, God, and the birds, bees and butterflies, up, up and further up above the world...
And in remembering that mystical, magical moment I recall, too, my realisation, as I stood and surveyed the town below, that the middle row of these vines stretched down in an almost straight line to where Sophie's house nestled among the closely-packed rooftops just below the church. And my sense, as I squinted and scanned the horizon, that the line didn't end there, at her house, but stretched beyond, across the Yonne and the fields and hills and far, far away, into infinity.
And with this remembrance, and an awareness that it's the anniversary of the night in 1373 when Julian of Norwich received her revelations of divine love, I also recalled her concluding words. Summing up everything she had been shown, she stated that love was God's meaning; and she ended with these words, which speak of a line which is Love, with no beginning or end, and stretching into infinity...
And I saw with absolute certainty that before God made us he loved us, and that this love never slackened, nor ever will. In this love he has done all his works, in this love he has made all things for our benefit, and in this love we shall live forever. Because of our creation we had a beginning, but the love with which he made us never had a beginning; in was in this love that we had our beginning. All this we shall see in God, for ever more.
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