Sun. Nov. 6, 2011 (Michael Thomas)

Michael Thomas spoke on Living the Stories, the memory of living and faith. The Book of Proverbs shows enormous respect to old people for their life wisdom they can pass to the next generation. Today's generation prefers to avoid attentive listening to the endlessly-repeated stories told by our old people. By contrast, the Book of Exodus orders the Jews to "tell the story", to keep it alive from one generation to the next. Since each generation inherits both the good and the bad from the earlier generation, we cannot understand ourselves if we do not know our ancestors' stories. The stories Jesus told were actually teaching tools, not simply entertainment. His story (Lectionary, Matt. 25.1-13) about the wise and foolish virgins reminds us that we have only one life to live, and we had better 'get it right' this time (there is no next time). During discussion, Michael added that singing hymns is essentially an act of collective memory as we review songs which were written learned, sung (memorized) generations before ours, and will exist long after our demise. Singing these songs is like ancestors telling stories, passing on the faith of our spiritual ancestors to the next generation. [JEK]

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