Nostalgia for the Light

Nostalgia for the Light
Nov 11, 2012     Southminster United Church  The Rev Dr. George Hermanson

I have a friend who is an astronomer.  Part of the year he is in Chile viewing  the skies.
Because of this our eyes caught an announcement for a  movie on PBS called Nostalgia for the Light.  Patricio Guzmán’s movie focuses on the similarities between astronomers researching humanity’s past, in an astronomical sense, and the struggle of many Chilean women who still search, after decades, for the remnants of their relatives executed during the dictatorship. The documentary includes interviews and commentary from those affected, from astronomers and archeologists.

All of them are asking questions we all ask, who we are,  and how we become who we are? These are the questions that science can only point us to.  My friend can see the stars that have been and yet still are touching us.  The look into the stars can tell us that past is part of our becoming.  Our time line is long.  And it reaches back, into the present moment.  In one sense, metaphorically, we remember in this present moment the influences of the past.  Yet that moment is fragile.  We also learn that that energy of the past is never lost, and that we are all intimately connected.  We are star dust.  We are part of one another.  Part of the cosmos.

One reviewer said “the documentary is (to be) praised for its stunning visuals and impressive views of the cosmos but despite the aesthetics, it evokes the idea that we, concern ourselves with fleeting power and evil deeds, treating both as though they are more than mere smudges on a much larger blueprint.”

It is the more than mere smudges we deal with in our reflections on our religious reality. We gather on remembrance day,  where memory is crucial.  We struggle with the meaning of such events as this.   We are tempted to romanticize the past.  We are tempted to use the past as a means to justify our own values: be it a rejection of war, or  to justify war or seek a just war ethic. Thus we have ambivalent feelings.  We seek to honour the past and at the same time reject romanticizing the past.

In the movie, astronomer Gaspar Galaz is introduced and he comments on how astronomy is a way to look into the past to understand our origins. It is generally a science seeking answers, but, in the process, creates more questions to answer. He comments that science in general, like astronomy and geology, is a look into the past; even sitting there having this interview, he comments, is a conversation in the past because of the millionths of a second light takes to travel and be processed. An archaeologists relates astronomer’s endeavours to his own; archeologists and astronomers have to recreate the past in the present by using only a few traces.

The processing of the memory is done in this fragile present.    We seek to weave together family stories with historical events, to create the meaning of an event.

One of the persons interviewed has to do this.  Her parents had been disappeared by the regime.  To save her, her grandparents had to give up her parents. The gift they gave her, though, was a love of the stars. After studying astronomy she comes to terms with what happened by believing that we, just like the stars, are all part of a cycle in which matter and energy is continuously recycled, but never lost. This idea leaves her strong and optimistic.

Remembrance day brings many emotions out in us.  We seek to come to terms with our history, both personal, nationally, and internationally.  Part of my family story is that my grandfather served in the Swedish army in the occupation of Finland.  In response they came to Canada to forget this past.  Yet, many of my cousins and uncles served in the second war.  Most of them did not want to talk about that experience and did not join in groups that romanticized that experience.  This formed my memory. 

There was another family memory that I did not learn about until I was a teenager.  A my father’s older brother served in the first war.  He was killed.  The story I learned as a teenager was that he was killed on Nov 11 at 10 in the morning, in 1918, when it was known the war was ending.  There was a general who wanted to make one last statement.  It does not matter that my family reversed the dates, because Nov 10 at 11 1918 was when he was shot.  The rationale was the same.  Such a memory made me question remembrance day.  How to remember?  Yes, many in my family served in the second war because they believed in the reasons for the war. Yet, his death was meaningless.   How to put the two stories together was the theological task?

The answer is Guzmán’s words at the end of  the documentary.  He affirms the value of memory because, as he states, “those who have a memory are able to live in the fragile present moments. Those who have none don’t live anywhere.”  No easy answers.

This view reminds us that remembrance day is about loss, facing danger, facing those who seek a world that is evil.   It is also about the cost and a reminder that never again was the reason for this day.   It is a fragile present we live in and our remembering calls for us to both to honour those who served and the horror of wars.  Remembering does not justify sacrifice or war, but understands that sometimes we must act to prevent a more corrupt future.  Remembering does not justify the acting for that justification is not ours.  Remembering makes us realistic about the joys and dangers of living.   Calling us to weave a way of living that lessens the reality of a broken reality.  To work to make this world a place of peace.