"NOTHING THAT HAS BEEN IS NO MORE"

So often we think that only our bad memories survive.  If I have suffered and the trauma lurks in my heart's subconscious, some small thing can trigger how I felt when I learned something hurtful. Thoughts are their own master.  

But no, nothing is forgotten.  Not the good things that have happened to us either.  Their daily presence is as strong as any pain.  Good memories buoy us up, lifting heaviness from our bodies. A friend sent a quotation from the autobiography of German theologian Jurgen Moltmann (b. 1926), which captures what I'm thinking better than I can express it. Moltmann writes: 

The people to whom I owe my life are unforgotten. 

They are present to me, because in their love

I became free and can breathe in wide spaces.

Unforgotten for me are people to whom I am bound in affection and respect.

They have entered into my life, and I perhaps a little into theirs.

Unforgotten for me are the dead whom I miss.

They are always especially present to me.

Nothing that has been, is no more;

everything that has happened remains. 

We cannot make anything undone, not the ill, but not the good either. 

What was lovely and successful,

and the happiness we have experienced,  

no one can take from us, 

neither transitory time nor death.

Isn't this reassuring?  "We cannot make anything undone, not the ill, but not the good either."  Not only the good we have received but also that which we have offered.

These words make me think about dealing with loss.  Loss has a context, the open field of all the good that went before.  Without that good there is no loss.  We can only lose what we value.  Like refugees, we too can feel displaced from our life as we know it.  Something can rock our image of self or the image we hold of someone else, or of God. An emotional earthquake.  But because the good that was remains, we can slowly glue the pieces of our life back together. Because "everything that has happened remains" there's always more to our lives than any sadness or disappointment.  

"What was lovely and successful, and the happiness we have experienced, no one can take from us, neither transitory time nor death." This is a truth for which I am very, very thankful.