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This week, we examine our heritage from the point of view of it being a constructed "history we can live with." When you get right down to it, "heritage" is what someone selects, remembers, and somehow passes along to the future. Out of "history" comes "heritage," and there is intention behind its content—also politics, power, vested interests, and plain old, and inconsistent, memories.
One of my favorite songs from the movie musicals is Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's "I Remember It Well," from Gigi, in which a couple looks back on their first meeting and finds, as so many of us do, that there isn't one version of the events in question. The grace and compassion that they have for one another in the face of failing memories forms the poignancy of the song, so memorably performed by Hermione Gingold and Maurice Chevalier. Read it through first, but then have a listen and a viewing of the scene from the movie, here.
I Remember It Well
Alan Jay Lerner
(Music by Frederick Loewe)
We met at nine. (We met at eight.)
I was on time. (No, you were late.)
Ah, yes, I remember it well.
We dined with friends. (We dined alone.)
A tenor sang. (A baritone.)
Ah, yes, I remember it well.
That dazzling April moon! (There was none that night, and the month was June.)
That’s right, that’s right. (It warms my heart to know that you remember still the way you do.)
Ah, yes, I remember it well.
How often I’ve thought of that Friday (—Monday—) night when we had our last rendezvous. And, somehow, I foolishly wondered if you might by some chance be thinking of it too?
That carriage ride! (You walked me home.)
You lost a glove. (I lost a comb.)
Ah, yes, I remember it well.
That brilliant sky! (We had some rain.)
Those Russian songs... (...from sunny Spain.)
Ah, yes, I remember it well.
You wore a gown of gold. (I was all in blue.)
Am I getting old? (Oh, no, not you. How strong you were, how young and gay, a prince of love in every way.)
Ah, yes, I remember it well.
Have you had a version of this scene in your own life—someone remembering things quite differently from the way you are pretty sure the events unfolded?
Were you (or they) able to demonstrate a degree of compassion, or did you insist that your memory was the "correct" one?
In what ways do you see these same kinds of dynamics playing out in the construction of history, perhaps with less unintentional "forgetting"?
How is it a part of our mission as a covenantal community, representing a diversity of views and lives, to capture a tapestry of truth rather than one or two official threads?
I am thrilled to welcome to the pulpit with me your beloved minister emerita, the Rev. Virginia Jarocha-Ernst. I hope you will have time with her to remember some choice things from UUCMC's past, but also to ruminate along with her and with me on the past's very construction. It should be a lively, thoughtful morning, and a joyful one, in a time in our world when there seems to be such a dearth of reasons for joy. A fundraising soup luncheon will follow, our first since before the pandemic, so come with some extra cash and an appetite!
I will see you tomorrow at 4:00 pm for Tea Time, and again on Sunday morning, "making history" together.
Welcome back, Rev. Virginia!
Rev. Craig
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