A community that remembers

Written by Tim Martin

In Greek mythology, Mnemosyne was the goddess of memory and the mother of nine daughters, known as the nine muses. For the Greeks, even before Homer and the written word, the capacity to remember was pivotal to the arts. The passing on of oral stories obviously required the ability to memorize words and ideas. But beyond simple mnemonic strategizing (memory tricks), the Greeks knew that our ability to draw on our past makes possible new and vibrant creative possibility. The muses of epic poetry, tragedy, history, music, and more all emerged from Mnemosyne, remembrance.

It is an interesting paradox to say that memory is essential for innovation. If we forget where we come from, we don’t know where we are going, you might say.

At Sanctuary, there are far too many memorials. We have lost so many friends and family members, and too soon. But one of the things that the Sanctuary community is good at is remembering. We as a community are touched by those we have known to be family. The work of a place like Sanctuary is to continue to pronounce these lives as significant, long after they have left us.

I believe that the artistic beauty—in music, in painting, in poetry, in drama—that has emerged from Sanctuary community members over the years is related to this capacity to remember. Remembrance and creativity, the stories of old and the imagination of the new, are ever locked in a mysterious embrace.

Those we have loved are with us even now. They are dancing with us on the ramparts, as the song goes. Even the psychologists tell us that memory is about practice, repetition. So let us keep practicing. And let our practice of remembrance stir us toward justice. Sometimes I use a hyphen, as in “re-member,” to emphasize that memory is about putting things back together, putting things right. If injustice is an attempt to “dismember” society, then perhaps justice is remembering.

And what does the mother of all muses demand from us? Perhaps it is Mother Jones’s words, often invoked at the Toronto Homeless Memorial: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”