#7 Joyful Remembering
The Month for Remembering Joy
August 29 to October 7, 2025
Sun Rises to Bless the Mountain
Photo by Anna Hines
William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30 begins with these elegant lines:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past,
And goes on to demonstrate an array of sorrows:
(notice his poignant verbs)
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste.
Is this familiar? He reminds us of what can happens next:
Tears begin to flow remembering all that is gone, all that is lost,
and we suffer again all that we have endured, sometimes feeling
it worse than it was originally:
Then can I drown an eye unused to flow
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long-since-cancelled woe,
And moan th’ expense of many a vanished sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
Finally, though – after ten painful lines of suffering, he brings us home to these words:
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.
What is true about this process, which he so gallantly
recounts for us is that at the core of every loss in his life,
at the core all of the pain, the things undone
or badly done, sits a giant mountain of caring, of cherishing, of love.
During the days of this beautiful autumnal month,
when we engage in remembrance of things past,
and perhaps feel it is required that we remember
all the things we haven’t done,
all the things we did badly,
all the beings and friends we have lost,
please also remember
that under it all
there is a mountain of sweet desire
(to do things well and gracefully)
a mountain containing a holy wish to be our truest self,
to accomplish well,
to forgive freely, to live fully.
This month is about restoring ourselves to that core mountain,
realizing that under all our worries, is care.
Under all our failures, is a holy dream.
Under all our losses, is great abiding love.
And we can rejoice.
Joy in the World. And in me.
Praise. Praise. Praise
A Holy Mountain from the Air
Photo by Denise McCarthy
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