During this time of All Saints and All Souls Tide, we held an In Love and Remembrance service at church. People attended who had held funerals here over recent months, or whose loved one’s service I had had the privilege of conducting up at The Crematorium.
Whilst tea was served after our time in church, one lady, whose husband’s service I had taken, was keen to walk me down the corridor and show me a lovely picture of her husband as a young boy in our Sunday School many, many decades ago. It was part of a display of archive photos currently in the Carey Room celebrating 60 years of our present building. There he was, sitting with his Sunday School class at a trestle table in the old church hall. This picture was a precious window into the reality of the past and it was good to linger in front of it together.
I’ve often heard people say that if the house caught fire the most important commodity they’d run out with would be the family photo albums. Indeed, one friend even told me recently that for years their albums lived in a cupboard by the front door for that very reason.
The first photo portrait, actually it was a selfie, ever taken was in 1839. I was amazed it was so early in the nineteenth century. By then photography had moved on enough for Robert Cornelius from Philadelphia, to take a self-portrait. It had to be done in the open, to catch enough light, with the shutter being held for a whole minute – so no blinking!
Over half term we visited Vienna and on Austria’s National Day we went to Schloss Belvedere on the outskirts of the city. It was once an Archduke’s palace and is now an art gallery. Back in 1955 it was the venue for the signing of the State Treaty that gave Austria back its independence after the country was occupied by the Allied Powers after the Second World War. There are lots of impressive photos of the dignitaries attending that seminal moment in Austria’s modern history, yet the one I remember most in the exhibition was of the crowd looking up to the balcony as the State Treaty was brought out and held aloft for all to see; it struck me as a picture of such joy. A snap shoot into the soul of Austrians in 1955 as they stood with immense hope on that first day of their new republic.
November offers us this season of remembrance with both All Soul’s Tide and Armistice Day held in the first half of the month. The pictures we have in our minds will carry a mixture of emotions because life is made up of light and darkness. And maybe the most precious images we carry in our hearts will not be of great public occasions, but small intimate moments shared between family and friends when love went deep and joy felt tangible.
And as every driving instructor will tell you, we look back (not too long and not too short) so we can go forward with confidence, knowing more precisely where we are on our journey.
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