Today I had a dismaying event; I accidentally deleted all the
pictures on a digital camera. There were some good shots there, too. I wouldn’t
think I’m the only person ever to do this, so I have to chalk it up to
experience. But I can see those lost images in my mind’s eye.
Fortunately,
last night I was at a lecture on Rilke. Rilke, like Dante, saw that loss
creates memory. Now my pictures vanished into complete nothingness, and nobody
but me will ever see them. You can’t remember the present, because it’s still
in progress. The past must then be loss, even if only lost time.
There were
other losses and vanishings. A child knocked on my door in tears to tell me her
dog had died. A woman spontaneously said her young niece had just suddenly
died. And it happened to be the anniversary of a tragic family death that
travels with me as a faithful guest present or hidden: a vanishing.
Deaths flow
through the underground channels of our memories, where vanished things go.
Consciously or no, they remain as companions. God also is present in the
underground channels. Here in Lent, we prepare to meet the death that refused
to vanish.
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