Remembering
Rachel started her first job last week.
She’s watching two little girls while their father is at work. At
the end of the first day, she told me a funny thing. “I don’t
know why, but I found myself humming little tunes all day long.”
“Your grandmother does that,” I said. “And so do I.” I do
it when I’m in the home and acting as the mother – I only do it when
I’m in that role, the mother role. I hum little tunes. And
when I visit my mother, she does it too. I will often stop her
and ask, “What is that tune that you are humming?” “Oh, am I
humming, I didn’t know,” she’ll say. And she doesn’t know, she’s
usually lost in her thoughts when she’s doing it. This sort of
unconscious memory is a funny thing – a habit of humming passed on from
mother to daughter through generations. Hmmm.
I have a favorite cup, one at a time, anyway. Over the years, I
may switch from one to another. Meanwhile, there is a cupboard
full of them, but I’ll only use one for months or years on end.
When my father comes to visit, my favorite cup always disappears – into
his hands. Without consciously knowing it (and I never tell him,
he is the guest, after all, and my father, he can use any cup he
wants), he always takes my favorite cup out of the cupboard, and uses
it during his entire visit. When I wake in the morning to make
tea, it is already gone. I only notice it because some very puny
little part of me is irritated by this. So, when he leaves, I go
in and clean the area where he has been sleeping and rush to reclaim my
favorite cup. The cup may change, but my father’s unerring
instinct to find it and favor it, just as I have, never seems to waver.
Memory is a funny thing: the way these instruments hum the same tunes,
and reach for the same experiences and repeat things over and over . .
.
Remember, behind WalMart is a field
With a gully where we used to hunt arrowheads
On soft September days.
Remember, just across from Pizza Hut
Was a stand of oaks where we ran for shade in August
Still as Indians watching the red fox and her babies.
Remember, underneath the parking lot
Was grandpa’s farm, the old barn where we jumped the hay pile
Sunk in the ticklish gold.
Remember, walk where you will,
Listen, there are stories under your feet.
Memory is powerful. When we are very new to this world, when we are infants, we are wide open. Tabula rasa,
they used to call the young child, a clean slate waiting to be written
upon. They were referring to the memory of course, memory waiting
to be encoded with sights, sounds, smells, thoughts and emotional
reactions. One of the reasons I am so concerned to teach the
basics of the Bible to children is that I know this: once those stories
are recorded in the memory of a young person, they will be with that
person for as long as the memory lasts. They will effect the way
that person thinks, feels, lives and acts, if they are recorded in the
memory. And that is just unconsciously. If that person
begins to intentionally, and consciously, take on spiritual work, their
early memory of the Bible will come to their aid – what they learned as
a child will begin to open itself up to new meaning, higher truths
hidden in the old stories will begin to reveal their secrets.
But I also know that, after a time, the memory is filled and, unless we
undertake conscious inner work, we stop really taking in new
information. Instead, everything is filtered through the old
memories, and new acquaintances are quickly stamped with old
prejudices, prejudices born of events long gone, projections from
memories we are carrying around but that other people have no idea
of. It takes conscious work for us to truly meet a new person as
they really are, rather than as we have unconsciously judged them to be
based upon our memories of other people and events. It takes very
conscious work for us to meet a new place and open ourselves to its
memories, its history, its present realities.
When I was vicar of St. Aidan’s, I visited with Johnson and Ellie Lee,
two veterans of both World War II and the Civil Rights movement.
They had a lot to share with me from their memories – powerful
memories. Johnson had been part of a group of soldiers who had
liberated one of the concentration camps in Germany. His own
collective memory, as the grandson of slaves, had given him a certain
perspective – he saw the liberation of the camps as a remembering of
the emancipation of the slaves in the south during the Civil War.
When our visit was ending, he said to me, “Well, I’ve seen them come
and I’ve seen them go,” referring to priests at St. Aidan’s. He
was letting me know that his memory was full, and that I was not going
to make any sort of impression on it. He already had me in a box,
as we all do unless we really make an effort to do otherwise. It
was a good reminder for me of what ministry is really about – serving
God, not serving the ego’s desire to be remembered. That’s a hard
tonic for the ego, believe me, but one well worth drinking, and
drinking in often.
My old friend from St. Aidan’s, Michael Garrett, wrote a song a few
years ago about the loss of memory that is now endemic in our society.
I found the nursing home, on Sunday afternoon.
I fought my fears, the smells and the tears, to go find grandma’s room.
She met me with a smile, who I was she did not know.
She said, “I wonder if you can tell me where old memories go?”
“It seems to me, I was a dancer, in a life lived long ago.”
Maybe the answer is where old memories go.
There’s a Bible on the shelf, where I found a faded rose.
But I can’t find the page that tells me where old memories go.
Our individual memories may last for a lifetime, or they may fade
before our lives are done. Thank God that that is not all there
is. Thank God that the spirit dances to music that continues to
play long after the fiddler’s fingers can no longer reach for the
strings. And thank God that he gave us the seed of the soul which
can grow to an instrument that may indeed be tuned to that fine and
subtle music. It takes work, but we are fashioned for just such
music by the touch of the Master’s hand, music that is not the
repetitive hum of past projections, but is ever new and alive and full
of wonder. Thank God that we are here to surrender to a higher
purpose and seek a higher truth, not to be lost in this land where old
memories go. Thank God that we keep here, at this hour, a much
stronger and more subtle memory alive – one that reshapes us from
individuals divided by our own ideas, opinions and memories, into one
body that remembers that 2000 years ago, the Kingdom of God came near,
very near, to us, and that it is near to us even now, even here, as we
are made one with the body and blood of Christ.
Amen.
The Rev. Edie Bird
June 1, 2008
Return to St. James' Home
Page 6.08