Remembrancer of Bliss

As if inclined before some gracious god
Who has out of his mist of greatness shone
To fill with beauty his adorer’s hours,
She bowed and touched his feet with worshipping hands;
She made her life his world for him to tread
And made her body the room of his delight,
Her beating heart a remembrancer of bliss. Book V, Canto III

How these magnificent lines from Savitri continue to reverberate in the mind and heart and soul I do not know. I know only this, that Savitri, as Mother has said, is "a mantra for the transformation of the world." As understanding grows within, not in the mind but in the inner cathedral which is always drenched in light, certain lines repeat themselves as mantra and I share what comes to me in a spirit of wonder and hushed elation.

I was awestruck by this line many times even though Mother writes: "At every moment we must shake off the past like fading dust, that it may not soil the virgin path which, at every moment also, is opening before us." Prayers and Meditations

Yet, how can I not remember those moments at Her feet, the times when She and Sri Aurobindo came to me in vision during sleep, the gifts of the spirit they showered upon me and on all of us…

The gifts of the spirit crowding came to him…

He made of miracle a normal act
And, turned to a common part of divine works,
Magnificently natural at this height
Efforts that would shatter the strength of mortal hearts,
Pursued in a royalty of mighty ease
Aims too sublime for Nature’s daily will:
The gifts of the spirit crowding came to him;
They were his life’s pattern and his privilege. Book I, Canto III

One day I began researching all that I could find on this unique word, 'remembrancer'.

These are perhaps the most salient definitions along with relevant poems by two great poets, Walt Whitman and William Wordsworth.

Here is a formal definition:

Although the noun when capitalized refers to an officer of the British judiciary or one of several officials of the Exchequer, formally titled the Queen's or the King's Remembrancer, who has the responsibility of collecting debts that are owed to the Crown or an official representing the City of London, especially on various ceremonial occasions, or to represents the inters of Parliament, when defined in lower case the first definition given is person who reminds.

From an original group of three 'remembrancers' only one is in existence today, the King's or the Queen's remembrancer.

The word is Middle English (1325-75) and is of Anglo-French provenance. Some dictionaries give the first known use as the 15th century.

Again, some further definitions:

The remembrancer of the city of London is parliamentary solicitor to the corporation, and is bound to attend all courts of aldermen and common council when required. Pull. Laws & Cust. Lond. 122. from Black's Law Dictionary.

A remembrancer is also a person who reminds others of something.

A remembrancer is a chronicler.

A Remembrancer—One who, or that which, serves to bring to, or keep in, mind; a memento; a memorial; a reminder.

Premature consolation is but the remembrancer of sorrow.—Goldsmith.

A lengthy and overly detailed definition from Wikipedia:

The Remembrancer was originally one of certain subordinate officers of the English Exchequer. The office itself is of great antiquity, the holder having been termed remembrancer, memorator, rememorator, registrar, keeper of the register, despatcher of business. The Remembrancer compiled memorandum rolls and thus "reminded" the barons of the Exchequer of business pending.

There were at one time three clerks of the remembrance, styled King's Remembrancer, Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer and Remembrancer of First-Fruits. In England, the latter two offices have become extinct, that of remembrancer of first-fruits by the diversion of the fund (Queen Anne's Bounty Act 1838), and that of Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer on being merged in the office of King's Remembrancer in 1833. By the Queen's Remembrancer Act 1859 the office ceased to exist separately, and the queen's remembrancer was required to be a master of the court of exchequer. The Judicature Act 1873 attached the office to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court of Judicature (Officers) Act 1879 transferred it to the central office of the Supreme Court. By section 8 of that Act, the king's remembrancer is a master of the Supreme Court, and the office is usually filled by the senior master. The king's remembrancer department of the central office is now amalgamated with the judgments and married women acknowledgments department. The king's remembrancer still assists at certain ceremonial functions relics of the former importance of the office such as the nomination of sheriffs, the swearing-in of the Lord Mayor of the City of London, the Trial of the Pyx and the acknowledgments of homage for crown lands.

Ruminations of a Remembrancer: From the Internet and writings by Lorinda J Taylor:

A "Remembrancer" is a Bard of the Shshi (termite) people. In the Shshi language the word is "thu'dal'zei|" -- literally, one who thinks about the past, thus the keeper of the oral history and myth of this people. When Prf. Kaitrin Oliva deciphered the Shshi language, she translated the term as "Remembrancer."

From "Leaves of Grass 6" by Walt Whitman:

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? … I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it

is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Sonnet by William Wordsworth:

Why should we weep or mourn, Angelic boy,
For such thou wert ere from our sight removed,
Holy, and ever dutiful--beloved
From day to day with never-ceasing joy,
And hopes as dear as could the heart employ
In aught to earth pertaining? Death has proved
His might, nor less his mercy, as behoved--
Death conscious that he only could destroy
The bodily frame. That beauty is laid low
To moulder in a far-off field of Rome;
But Heaven is now, blest Child, thy Spirit's home:
When such divine communion, which we know,
Is felt, thy Roman-burial place will be
Surely a sweet remembrancer of Thee.

[1846]

From the Bible:

I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that are the Lord's remembrancers, keep not silence, and give Him no rest, till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth." ISA. lxii.6, 7.