Wave tracings in the sand...

Waves washing up on the white sugar sand shore leaving line drawings as a visual memory of their passage…

Our conversations were peppered with the phrase “Do you remember?” Do you remember the night we came home and found the fire engine in front of the condo… the time we spent shelling crabs we caught while we watched the Olympics… the cloud of mosquitoes we had to walk through every time we went to the beach… the thunderstorm and lightening that was so beautiful out over the ocean… the luminescence on the beach and in the water on our evening beach walk… the hurricane that chased us off the beach and then followed us inland to Williamsburg? We spent nearly twenty years of beach vacations with our children growing up as we roamed the beaches of the Gulf and the Atlantic.

We are separated now by distance, no longer next door neighbors but there is no distance between our hearts. Our children are grown with children of their own and the beach tradition no longer is one that includes both families. The logistics are overwhelming. But for this one week, the four of us were back together again bound by love and memory.

Our children would have been amused by us. One minute we are all absorbed in our portable technology… I Pads, Smart Phones, Mac Air… and then we are telling stories of summers past. Traditionally we have carried a box full of books for beach reading. This year we share not only books but Aps as well. Our mutual ignorance and partial knowledge of our children’s technological world is one of our hallmark memories this year of beach remembering.

World Communion Sunday is today, a time when Christians all over the world, share a meal based on memory. It is a simple meal, bread and wine, a meal that honors the past and calls us into the future. We remember the life of the one we call Lord, his death and new life, and we are part of a family that gathers around the table to weep and laugh together. Our church will gather in a circle, pass the bread and wine to each other, hold hands and sing, and for one brief moment, be the Family of God without barriers of color or creed. It is a memory worth holding on to, a memory that could lead us into a new world of loving connection and living sacrifice one for another. Memories… the ties that bind us and free us, that call us to new frontiers as Christians… can be past and future if we but let them lead us. May it be so, please, Lord?