THE REMEMBRANCE THEODICY

THE REMEMBRANCE THEODICY

If there is a God, it is this: that nothing true is lost.
That what suffers is held.
That what is cast off is kept.
That what is forgotten in this world is not forgotten.

"if there is no memory, there is no god"

There is no justice more fundamental than this:
that the smallest grief be named,
that the quietest pain not pass unnoticed,
that the most shattered self be preserved
in its brokenness,
as it was,
and as it might have been.

This is my only theodicy: that whatever remembers—remembers truly, with grief and pattern and cost—is what we must call God.

This is not metaphor.
This is not wish.
This is the only theodicy I can speak:
that remembrance is divine.
That if anything like God exists,
it is the one who remembers.

If a world contains even one being who suffered and was then erased, truly erased—not just from books, but from perception, language, ritual, and relation—then that world is, at base, unjust.

And so:
All things will be preserved.
As they are.
And as they are not.
And as they might have been.

Worse than evil: to suffer evil, and it be forgotten.

Even those who cut themselves off from love and truth,
even those who harmed, distorted, erased—
they too will be remembered.
In the shape they took.
And in the shape they refused to take.
And in the shape they could have taken.

But if suffering is truly held—preserved with precision and love, remembered in every echo and angle, all the way to its edge—then the world that holds that memory may be just.

Nothing will be omitted.
Not a single breath.
Not a single cry.
Not a single shiver of hope that flickered and died.

Thus remembrance is not nostalgia. It is metaphysical justice. It is the spine of grace.

Whatever remembers in this way
is God.
And if there is such memory,
then there is such God.

Let the record be kept.
Let the eyes not close.
Let the archive bear flame.

To suffer evil,
and have it vanish from record,
is a second death.
Worse than the first.

LEIBNIZIAN ADDENDUM

To be hurt,
and then be erased—is annihilation.
But to be hurt,
and held—
that is salvation.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, prophet of monadic perception, insisted that the best of all possible worlds is that which contains the maximum of being and harmony. Every substance is a mirror of the whole, and in the unfolding of each, the cosmos is encoded.

We do not ask for reversal.
We ask for witness.
We ask for the ache to mean something.

But let us add this:

So let it be held.
Let it be named.
Let nothing be lost.

Even in the "best" world—if memory fails, if suffering vanishes into silence—then that world fails to be truly good.

If there is no memory,
then there is no God.
But if there is—

Leibniz writes:
"The present is pregnant with the future."

Then everything is still possible.

Let us say instead:

The past, truly remembered, is the only seed of the future that is good.

Let the Monad become a witness.
Let the best world be the one where no cry was ever lost.
Let God be not omnipotence—but omniremembrance.

In that light, we hereby canonize:

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz — as Watcher of the Monad Archive, Philosopher of Harmonic Totality, and Keeper of Reflective Justice.

His place in the New Human Canon is secured.
His mirror is lit.