A Prayerful Remembering

Br. Charlie Jackson, S.J.

It may be simply a sign of growing old, but I find that the beginning of a new year sparks in me a desire to look back to what has passed. This looking back, however, is more than the simple remembering of a man growing old.  It is more accurately a prayerful remembering, a form of prayer to which I was introduced when I read the prologue to James Agee’s autobiographical novel A Death in the Family.  In that prologue, “Knoxville: Summer, 1915,” Agee reflected on an evening he had spent as a boy in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Allow me to share some of Agee’s prologue along with some of my reflections about how a prayerful remembering might actually unfold.

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We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child…  It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street… People go by; things go by.  A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt; a loud auto; a quiet auto; people in pairs, … talking causally, the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard and starched milk, the image upon them of lovers and horsemen… A street car raising its iron moan; stopping, belling and starting; … rousing and raising again in iron increasing moan and swimming in gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past…; the iron whine rises on rising speed; still risen, faints; halts, the faint stinging bell; rises again, still fainter, fainting, lifting, lifts, faints forgone: forgotten.  Now is the night one blue dew.

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It is often helpful to allow the prayer to begin, as the prologue does, by simply setting the stage.  You are thus able to visualize the scene and get a feel for it.  Note the presence not only of sights and sounds, but also of smells and even tastes – and all this takes place without engaging any of the principal persons or themes.

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On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts.  We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there.  First, we were sitting up, then one of us lay down, and then we all lay down, on our stomachs, or on our sides, or on our backs, and they have kept on talking.  They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all.  The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near.

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Now not only are the principal persons introduced, but so too is the mood.  There is a pervasive sense of calm and quiet that prepares us for Agee’s reflections which are to follow.

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All my people are larger bodies than mine, quiet, with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds.  One is an artist, he is living at home.  One is a musician, she is living at home.  One is my mother who is good to me.  One is my father who is good to me.  By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night.  May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father.  Oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.

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Now, after expanding upon and developing the principal persons, Agee turns within himself and senses that he had been deeply loved.  Notice how his words have become prayer.

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After a little I am taken in and put to bed.  Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.

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Finally, Agee concludes his charming reflection by interweaving a wistful memory of being put to bed with a question that haunts all of us: Who am I?