This past Saturday, we took the boys to the Renaissance Faire. It was a long day, with lots of crowds, and it was a fun day. We tried some new foods, one of the kids had his face painted, they each got wooden swords, we watched a joust and some swordfights, and the kids trained to be knights. We weren’t costumed, but others were, and it was lovely to see people enjoying what must clearly be a beloved pastime for them.
It got me thinking about history. The Renaissance Faire is more imagined medieval history than Renaissance. It is fertile ground for fun and play, and wild use of imagination– often at a Ren Faire some folks will show up in Star Trek cosplay, as though they had traveled through time to encounter this moment. History in a factual sense was not in great supply, but history as something we attempt always to access, through imagination, experience, and emotion, that was in full bloom.
I loved historical fiction as a child. I would stay up until the wee hours reading. (This one author, Ann Rinaldi, was my favorite!) My own family doesn’t tell stories particularly well. I didn’t grow up with tales from my parents or grandparents’ childhoods, and I felt the lack of that, though perhaps others might not have. I also grew up Unitarian Universalist in a time when and in a congregation where storytelling, emotion, experience took a backseat to information, statistics, analysis. The dream, of course, is to combine them all.
I think my desire for history and stories is the same impulse that leads us humans to look back in the regularized ways we have created– looking back at the new year, for example. Taking a chance to look at where we have come from in both expansive and more contracted ways. We want to understand what brought us to this moment, and many of us want to move forward from it in ways better than we arrived.
Beginning tonight are the days in Judaism referred to as the Days of Awe. These are days that encompass the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and also the Day of Repentance (Yom Kippur). These 10 days are full of opportunity to look back and try to understand whence we come and to try and affect where we are going.
This Sunday, we will do this work together, exploring ways we might bring pain, guilt, or shame to our present, and how we can put them down and step forward.
Please join us!
