This is a four-day weekend of traditonal family gatherings in the United States. Meant to be a time of reflection and thanksgiving, it has become a weekend of football watching, movie going and over-eating, not to mention a time of creating memories. Every year, our family, in all it’s manifestations, looks forward to time with family. And every year, it seems the event itself disappoints. It’s the memories that are the glue that binds us.

Clement of Alexandria has some profound observations of the limits of memory:

“If any man thinnks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. For the truth is never mere opinion. But the supposition of knowledge inflates and fills with pride…but love edifies….if any man loves, he is known.”

Robin Amis, reflecting on this in A Different Christianity continues:

“Careful observation confirms the statement…illusions are as much a part of the content of memory as is genuine knowledge – perhaps more, since the only knowledge we normally possess is partial knowledge, or ‘knowledge of the world’ shaped by man’s mind with all the distortions this is prone to….{Clement teachs us thus}

- love does not deal in supposition, but
- love deals in truth
- if anyone loves, he/she is known

May the memories you make with those you love be the stuff of love, the sort of love that purifies us of illusions and deepens the peace that is beyond our understanding.