I'm writing the message for an upcoming memorial service - not for a particular individual, but for a group of people who are unconnected except that they were cared for by our hospice. That makes it difficult to focus: they (probably) don't want a sermon, but I need to try to say something meaningful.
I found this quote, while looking for another (which has eluded me, and I've spent way too long looking for it already), attributed to the German philosopher Martin Heidegger:
“What was Aristotle’s life?’ Well, the answer lay in a single sentence: ‘He was born, he thought, he died.’ And all the rest is pure anecdote.”
Regardless of whether he said it or not, it captures some of what I want to say, in an inverse form: what we really care about is the anecdotal aspect. We are our stories, and that's what needs to be told. That said, I doubt I'll use the quote for the memorial service, so I thought I'd leave it here instead.
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