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Good morning. How do you sum up a life in a few words? As a vicar in Nottingham I took many funerals. Sitting with grieving families, we sometimes spent hours remembering: who was this person who has now gone? How do we remember them in ways that are both helpful and honest? It’s often tempting to only stress the good, or let the bad overwhelm. And it can be hard to hear the different voices of those who remember differently. Memory is powerful: it shapes the story of how we are interwoven, connected, and, at times, disconnected. Choosing what to say in a funeral shapes how we place ourselves in the story, and where we place this other person who has now lost their voice. If it is complex to remember families and friends, it is even more so for public figures whose life was spent on the world stage, like Henry Kissinger, who died a few days ago. Should he be remembered as a peacemaker, or for his decisions regarding Viet Nam? The temptation to idolise or demonise is always there. But just as with the families I sat with, the way forward lies in seeking to tell the whole story. The Bible, like many religious texts, is full of memories, told over and over, at different times, in different places and for different reasons. The Old Testament tells the stories of the people of Israel and their leaders. But those are complex stories, so we get different, sometimes strangely competing accounts. Famous leaders, like David, are not represented in monolithic, unambiguous fashion. The Book of Chronicles offers a rather unblemished portrait of a powerful king leading a strong nation. The book of Samuel offers a rather more sober portrait of a man with openness to God, yet consistently abusing his power, privately and politically, with catastrophic consequences. One perspective does not negate or invalidate the other. The ability to keep these different, almost conflicting, perspectives together might be at the heart of remembering well: refusing to hide or diminish the bad, but refusing, equally, to diminish the good. Human beings need one another to remember well, to be truthful, and fair. Memory is not like a detailed photograph; it is more like a mosaic, with many tiles, some missing, and cracks and faultlines in between. Remembering is, essentially, a communal task. As the tiles of our different perspectives and stories are put together, we might start to see the bigger picture, with its light and shadows, its imperfections, the stories it tells of our past, and the lessons we might draw for our future.