#7 Joyful Remembrance 2019

Joy in the World

The Month for Joyful Remembrance

August 29 – October 7

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance;

Pray you, Love, remember.

Ophelia in true Shakespearean fashion distributes herbs and flowers to the characters onstage with her during the dramatic and poignant moments of her madness.

One of her fears is the all-too-heartbreaking one of forgetting. As we invite her to catch us in our dream moments, and as we take the sprig of rosemary from her fingers, we can begin to catalog those things that need to be remembered: In our thoughts and prayers.

• The young ones like Ophelia, lost, forsaken, betrayed, grief-stricken.
• Friends gone beyond our knowing, wishing to be remembered in their living power.
• All the living things around us asking for a moment’s attention: the dog barking, the crow cawing, the car whizzing by, the strolling strangers visiting our town
• The flowering trees and plants, and those consumed by the summer fires, lovers and beloveds, pets and petunias, wild waters and placid ponds, all living things—as many as we can observe and hold in memory.

Our practice is to see or sense all these beings one by one and to float images of joy and delight and happiness toward them wherever and however they may be in this moment. With gratitude and praise for life. Handing the delicious smelling herb of rosemary to each of our remembered ones.

Pray you, Love, remember. And pray you, remember love. And joy.

Joy in the World

And in me.