September 28, 2016

Chris McDonnell, UK

The recall of memory

(Comments welcome here)

chris@mcdonnell83.freeserve.co.uk

A couple of weeks ago, listening to the BBC world service I heard a strange tale that caught my imagination.

It was a story of the lost tunes from the distant island of St Kilda , a remote gathering of rocks some fifty miles north-west of the Outer Hebrides . Never able to sustain a large population, by 1930 it had reached crisis point with the islanders down to a population of eighty. It was decided that the only option was to evacuate the whole island and bring its people back to the mainland. That took place in late August of 1930.

One of those taken off the island was a musician who, during WW2 taught a young boy from Glasgow to play the piano, the tunes he taught him had no sheet music but were the remembered tunes that were once sung on St Kilda. Recently that young boy, now himself elderly and in a care home began playing them again. The outcome is a most beautiful disc of wistful music arranged by James Macmillan, a true melodic delight. With the last resident of the islands now dead, they are an abiding record of a lost way of life.

Memory is a strange experience and often as we grow older, even though our short term memory is not wonderful, our long term memory of earlier years remains strong.

We often refer to the early years of the Church and the experiences of early Christians as the tradition of the Church. What must those years that followed Resurrection and Ascension have been like? We have a written record in the Acts and the letters of Paul and others, we have the account of Christian life in the Didache, a first century text whose author is unknown, the only written record of its kind relating to those times.

So with the passing of years, the development of the written tradition of the Church and the on-going lived tradition its teaching became an established feature of the faith in Europe and beyond.

Although we live in the context of that memory, nurtured in the faith handed down through many generations, it would be wrong to assume that there has been no change, no growth, no realisation of deeper truth. Each of us have lived through the culture and experience of our time, witnessed the joys of community and known the consequent conflicts of war when disagreement has not been resolved.

Now we have to contribute to the understanding of Incarnation in the light of our own times. We can opt for a sterile, bland acceptance without question of the Gospels or we can explore them deeply and make them part of our own lives, changing who we are and affecting who we might become. John Henry Newman’s famous quote is worth recalling. ‘To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.’

Faith is not foolish, blind acceptance but a gift that is given us after exploration, after our own seeking, stumbling often but through it all gradually coming to a determined conviction.

The memories that we have are important to our story, for what we remember has shaped us and formed us. That is why it is important that we pass on an oral tradition to those who are younger, to children and grandchildren within families who listen to a story that is theirs and to those in schools where they will learn of their culture and the broader events that have shaped life on earth.

Each of us takes fragments forward, the image of a parent, their voice and their struggles as we will rely on others to tell of our part in that journey. It happens biologically through our DNA, so too verbally the DNA of experience is shared with those who follow us.

St Kilda is now an uninhabited rock, occasionally visited by bird-watchers and researchers. But after many hundreds of years it is no longer home, where sunrise and sunset over the grey ocean was once the daily clock of its people.

I will conclude with the first part of a piece called ‘ Island ’ which I wrote a few years back.