It’s Dementia Action Week. Amidst all the events, information sessions and activities, I wrote this little prayer for Manningham Uniting Church. It was distributed through their monthly magazine, which this month is focused on memory.
God of both memory and forgetting,
you remember us tenderly yet you forget our sins.
Help us do likewise.
Help us recall the good, the joyful, the just.
Help us bear our pain and loss.
Help us forget all hurt.
And when we cannot remember even ourselves,
remember us, God. Remember us.
Hold us firmly in your love.
For you have written our names in a memory book,
and claimed us as your own.
For more on this theme, I reflect on a practice which sustained my grandparents through dementia here. I talk about a God who seeks us whenever we are lost, including the wilderness of dementia, here.
Alluding to Hebrews 8:12, Malachi 3:1617 and other texts. Written for Manningham Uniting Church MUC Magazine September 2025 © Alison Sampson, 2025. Photo by Steven HWG on Unsplash.
Alison and the whale 