This week, Carol Bechtel, the executive director of the American Waldensian Society, shares the second part of what she said at the February 17th celebration at Old Rock School in Valdese, North Carolina. Part one of her remarks was featured in March. Part three of her remarks will be shared in the near future.
Carol’s remarks are based in large part on the fourth and final volume of a new history of the Waldensians by Paolo Naso. The fourth volume of Paolo’s wonderful and ambitious history covers the period from the second half of the 19th century to the late 20th century.
Memory, as you probably know, is different from history.
History, after all, is what happened. Memory is the way we remember what happened. Do you see the difference? Memory is what we retain long after the episodes of history are left behind.
Think of a particular event in your past. Maybe it’s something that happened to your family. A house fire, for instance. Or a car accident. Or some experience you had in high school. It can be a bad experience or a good experience, but your own impressions of it may be quite different from other people’s—even if they were there experiencing it with you!
I can tell you’re all thinking of your own examples. That’s what makes family and class reunions so “interesting,” isn’t it?
Whether our impressions of the “event” are accurate or not, we carry the memories that are shaped by these impressions around with us for years. They stay with us long after the events that gave rise to them have faded over the horizon of history. If they are good, healthy memories, they can give us strength of character. If they are bad, unhealthy memories, we drag them around like unwanted baggage, and they can do serious damage to our life and relationships.
Why am I talking about this? It’s because I’m trying to encourage us to do the hard work of examining our memories.
In Paolo Naso’s introduction to Volume 4, he presses us to take a hard look at the way we remember certain parts of our history. Like a good therapist, he encourages us to examine our memories and ask ourselves some hard questions. How does what really happened (which we know from historical research) compare to the selective things we remember about those events? Are the stories we are telling ourselves—and others—the full stories? Or are they only the parts we want to remember?
Here is a case in point. In a section called “The ‘adaptation’ to fascism,” Paolo presses us to look beyond the well-known—and rightly celebrated—stories of Waldensian resistance to Fascism during WWII. These stories of courage and sacrifice are important, he stresses, and they are memories of which we can rightly be proud. But there are other stories as well, and we need to acknowledge them if we are to learn from our past. Here’s a quote. He writes:
The documents we have at our disposal highlight a feeble and surprisingly reductive reaction even to the racial laws of 1938… If various studies clearly attest to the anti-fascist positions of some pastors, intellectuals and many young Waldensians, the silent immobility of the church in its institutional form is equally evident.
It’s a mix, in other words.
It would be easier, of course, not to acknowledge that mix. Part of us probably wants to say, “Oh, that was a long time ago. Let’s just leave the past in the past.”
I get that. Yet, isn’t that part of the point? The past doesn’t stay the past. And if our memories are to be more than just idealistic nostalgia, we owe it to ourselves—and to our children—to do the hard work of making our memories more accurate. We need to face the bad as well as the good, and use both to prepare us for the present.
Anybody who lived through World War II would tell you that it was a complicated time. The choice was not always between “good and bad,” but between “bad and worse.” But I wonder if we are entering into a time that is a lot like that. Isn’t it possible that this kind of work—this work of examining our memories to make sure that they are more than just nostalgia for the good old days—isn’t it possible that this is the very work that will make us better able—with God’s help—to meet the challenges of the present moment?
This is the second part of Carol Bechtel’s address. The third and final part will be published in the coming weeks. It will highlight the relationship between history and vocation.
