Kneeling to remember
It was Memorial Day, and I was sitting in the church of General George S. Patton. Well, it was not quite his church, but his family had erected a monument to him in the churchyard and smuggled in a stained-glass window depicting an object or two dear to the general’s heart and indispensable for the general’s trade.
A few sentences into the sermon it became clear that the rector, Denis O’Pray, was unintimidated by the “military presence” on the church’s premises. In a world drenched in violence, he insisted, the church of Jesus Christ has not condemned violence with sufficient clarity and force. The sermon was heading the right direction, I thought. Being a certain kind of pacifist, I felt comfortable, the general’s stained-glass window right above my head notwithstanding. But my mind was unruly and wandered elsewhere—though my bad conscience kept returning it to its proper place. A fine Memorial Day sermon served as an occasion to explore connections between memory and violence.
The first station of my explorations was Elie Wiesel’s memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea, which I had read a year or so ago. Stating the reason for the book, he writes (no, I am not quoting from memory): “I am 66 years old, and I belong to a generation obsessed by a thirst to retain and transmit everything. For no other has the commandment Zachor—‘Remember!’—had such meaning.” Why this obsession with memory? Because the memory of death will serve as a shield against death, argues Wiesel. Salvation, he wrote elsewhere, “can be found only in memory.” A bit overstated, I thought, but basically right, provided one understands it rightly.
