The Time of Recollection

Again and again, it comes:
the Time of Recollection,
the Season of Remembrance.
Empty vessels of hope fill up again;
Forgotten treasures of dreams
reclaim their place;
Long lost memories come trooping back to me.
This is my season of remembrance,
my time of recollection.

Into the challenge of my anguish
I throw the strength of all my hope:
I match the darts of my despair
with the treasures of my dreams;
Upon the current of my heart
I float the burden of the years;
I challenge the mind of death
with my love of life.
Such to me is the Time of Recollection,
The Season of Remembrance.

(For the Inward Journey: the writings of Howard Thurman.
Selected by Anne Spencer Thurman. page 257
Originally published in Meditations of the Heart)

My view of the sunrise is obscured by the Warren Burger Courthouse and the Ramsay County Community Services Building across the street. There is a pink and yellow glow emerging behind these two buildings, and a pale blue sky above us all.

“Empty vessels of hope fill up again.” I spent a sacred hour yesterday with leaders of the Shelter Rock congregation thinking about leadership and relationship, about mission and impediments, about the ways we balance the three cultures of bureaucracy and markets and mission. It was a time where “I felt heard,” and I am hopeful about our future together.

“Forgotten treasures of dreams reclaim their place.” Jim Oestereich picked me up at Unity Church—Unitarian in St. Paul to take me for a visit with Maxine Klein in Minneapolis. Jim filled me in on some of the details of their lives since COVID. The end of Max’s teaching career (in her mid-80s!), his shift to online teaching of piano and guitar (and, yes, banjo). His coaching rappers about the structure of music (?!?) and his work scoring an award-winning film “39 Seconds.”

And then we got to Max’s living room. I was not sure what to expect—of her or in me. I’m sure I conflated some of my mother in her last years due to their shared dementia diagnoses. But when she called me name, when I was just entering the room, and started shouting directions, it was clear that he sharp-as-tacks Maxine was present, and so very full of love. It was as if we had never parted.

The exact “forgotten treasures” that we reclaimed I leave to my heart/mind, with gratitude. But Max was so very interested in knowing more about people we share. Two men that she maneuvered into love affairs with me (blushing). An actress that meant the world to Max and me and whose departure from Little Flags hurt her, although she understood why. Some of the producers we performed for. Members of our old Board of Directors.

We talked about the ways capitalism continues to mask itself, more fully reaches into our lives to control us, to turn us to cogs in the great machine, to take away our power and to turn us into obedient consumers. We talked about the heartache of the struggle, and of its joy.

We talked about her commitment to animals, a commitment as she aged that she could live into by propaganda, of course, and by some direct action in rescuing animals. No dogs in the house any more, but rescued animals in the heart and in the stories. And a reassessment of former times when her viewpoint of anti-vivisectionists, for example, was not-so-fully formed, sometimes harsh.

We spoke of the heartache and necessity of leaving. “I match the darts of my despair with the treasures of my dreams,” Thurman says, and that was where we lived. For an hour we did such matching. And on several occasions, she extracted a commitment of me. largely to write. “Do you promise?” she would demand, “I know you never break a promise.”

Mostly she talked about greatness. We live on the greatness that has been exhibited to us, and that allows us to feed on the greatness to find our own. We are responsible for exhibiting our greatness—our gifts and our passions, our intelligence and our love—and allowing others to be nourished by it that they may find and grow their own greatness. Thus will we remake the world.

I told my siblings that I left “feeling ten feet tall.” Has anyone ever made me feel as she has? The emotional gamut we ran was broad, and there was pain and insanity in our interactions. “Upon the current of my heart I float the burden of the years,” and the burden is easy when accompanied by such strength in and with others.

“This is the Time of Recollection.” So grateful to be in Minnesota. So fortunate for the invitation to visit, both the present moment, and “the Season of Remembrance.”