I’ve been ruminating about…memory
A few years ago, when I was back in my home town for a visit, I took a walk up to my old primary school, wandering through the grounds at a snail’s pace, observing how much had changed yet how much had really stayed the same. Of course, there were memories around every corner. There was the outdoor pool where on an overcast autumn day I finally took my first genuine swimming strokes – much to the relief of my very patient Standard 2 teacher. I’d felt like such a retard, being one of the last in our class to learn to swim. After I had dried off and changed he sent me to the principal’s office to receive my certificate with a gold star.
I walked over to the old school hall where I starred as “Bluebeard” in the school musical in my Standard 4 year, and where we practiced dancing that year. I could almost hear again my teacher, Mr Kinsella, suggesting to me that I moved more like a tin soldier than a dancer!
Then there were the playing fields where I spent so much time playing cricket and rugby and running around. I could hear the crowds yelling as I ran for the line in the cross country. I could feel the gasping for breath as I led my team to victory in a lunchtime inter-house rugby competition in the howling gale of a winter’s southerly, triggering my first and only asthma attack.
I remembered the blood pouring from my forehead after my head collided with the front tooth of Graeme McLean as he and I both ran from opposite directions to try and take a high kick, both sets of eyes focused on the descending rugby ball!
Memory after memory came flooding back.
But interestingly, the most powerful memories were reserved for the Primers (if you’re under 40, read “Juniors”!). I peered inside Miss Grant’s classroom where I spent the first six months of my schooling. The mat at the front where we would all sit down after lunch and have a rest was still there. It brought immediate feelings of safety and peace.
Then I walked around to the back of the Primer block to a small grass area and the memories really hit me. This is where we ate lunch on fine days. I could see lots of five and six year olds sitting down in the sun opening their lunch boxes, taking out their luncheon paper-wrapped sandwiches (no Gladwrap in those days!) And then there was that smell. Not at all unpleasant, but very distinctive, of fresh white bread sandwiches – full of Marmite and jam and peanut butter. Lots of them!
What a powerful trigger to memory our senses are. Every time I smell those same distinctive aromas from the Primers block, my mind goes back to that scene – and this is 45 years on! Tastes, smells, sights, sounds and even certain touches can all activate the very substantial recalls on times past – experiences, people, situations, emotions and places.
Memories are incredible powerful in our lives – for good and for bad.
Think about this for instance: when we sing an old song at church on Sunday, it’s not just the fact that people know the song that causes them to sing so passionately and loudly. I’m convinced it’s also because that song encapsulates and brings back particular memories, times and experiences. There’s an element of sentimentality often mixed in with the very positive message of the song. The hymn or chorus is a powerful memory trigger.
The prison of bad memories
At its best, memory is a great gift from God to us. We would literally be lost without it.
Of course, in such a broken world we must remember that memory is not always positive and life-giving. Some memories can produce nightmares, immobilize us and reinforce wrong perceptions about ourselves, the world and God.
All of us have such memories. Sadly, for some, it’s these memories that dominate. Trauma, loss, pain and horror have become such a way of life that these experiences scar our memory banks, indelibly etching the negative on our minds and emotions. We see this in the eyes of the abused child, or the refugee, the battered wife and the socially rejected. Some of the foster children who came to live with us were so damaged that their take on reality was dreadfully skewered. It’s a truism, but they had seen and endured things that no child their age should have to experience. Their innocence had well and truly been shattered.
Compared to them, I was fortunate to have a blessed childhood. And my life since then has been remarkably free of pain (though not completely of course).
Even so, there are painful memories that have at times immobilized me and caused me much grief. Times where I have been shamed in front of my peers, words, labels and accusations that have stuck and have warped my view of myself. These memories, left untreated, trigger unbearable feelings that cause me to react time and time again in a negative and destructive manner.
Of course, God wants to heal our bad memories. For he knows the damage caused by constant dredging up of emotions and experiences that taint and twist the truth about ourselves, others and God. Left to their own devices, such memories will keep us imprisoned from the truth. They’ll shackle us to something well short of Jesus’ promised abundant and full life.
The abyss of lost memory
And then there is the tragedy of loss of memory. For over fifteen years one of my grandmothers’ suffered from Alzheimers. At first it was mildly amusing to us all that Nana would forget things or tell us the same thing two or three times in a conversation. And the wonderful cakes she baked sat in her cupboards for weeks, untouched, forgotten.
But the implications of loss of memory quickly became more acute. One day my Mum and aunty found Nana downtown in her dressing gown, totally lost and not knowing where she was. This happened more than once. It soon became apparent that she could no longer live by herself, but even a brief attempt to have her at home with my parents only lasted a week. She had to be watched every minute of every day. It would only take a few seconds of Mum’s back being turned for Nana to slip out the door and down the road.
In the later years, Nana’s Alzheimers caused her to degenerate to the state of a baby – unable to do anything for herself, to feed, get dressed or go to the toilet. She was totally unaware of who we were, or who she was. Visiting her in the hospital wing of a rest home became a distressing affair. Nana’s memory was shot to pieces. She was completely adrift – floating aimlessly on a sea of incomprehension and unfamilarity. The anchor of her memory – which in normal circumstances would have held her firm to who she was and what she meant to us and to God, was well and truly broken. Nana had no past to hold onto, and no future to look forward to. Her loss of memory had become an abyss.
Creating memories
Nana’s disconnection from her past was all the more tragic to me because she had contributed so much to my own memory-making.
I was very fortunate that both sets of grandparents lived just down the road. And after my grandfathers had died, our lives continued to be intertwined with our grandmothers.
I remember, for instance, the Saturday night ritual of going to Nana and Poppa’s after dinner to watch TV (one of the very early black and white versions!). After a little while Poppa would give my older brother and I some coins and send us down to the corner dairy to buy the evening sports paper and three chocolate fish – one for each of us boys.
Staying at their place was also a highlight. And for the two years I spent at intermediate school I would go to Nana and Poppa’s for lunch once every few weeks (they only lived a few doors away). A cooked meal in the middle of a school day was always welcome, but the highlight for me was when Poppa would say, “I love it when you come to lunch, Wayne. It’s the only time I ever get dessert.”
Our own children have not been so fortunate in being geographically close to their extended family. However, we’ve all worked hard at making sure we connect regularly and in doing so, build memories. The family Christmases, the holidays, the grandparents visiting – all these have added to the rich experience our daughters have had growing up.
Building the memory banks. Or to mix metaphors, building a reservoir of memories, to draw upon in future years. This is, I believe, part of the role of parenting, grandparenting, uncle and aunty-ing. Creating memories. And it’s significantly added to by the close friends we develop, who also share in the memory-making.
However, building memories is only one part of the challenge. The other is to learn to recall the stories and to recount them on a regular basis.
“Remember when…” stories and other family legends
We all love stories. And the stories, told and retold, of our families and faith communities, give us an opportunity to cement our identity. One of our family legends is the simple but outrageous story of me taking a shower in a most unusual place – the huge front lawn of a Florida home in the early hours of a tropical summer’s morning. I’d like to excuse my behaviour by suggesting that it was performed in my younger days when I had yet to discover what was appropriate, but the truth was I was in my early thirties at the time!
When we gather together for special occasions, this is one of the stories that gets asked to be retold. And each time, regardless of how many times family and close friends have heard it, we all laugh and hang on every morsel of the tale of a desperate and somewhat foolhardly husband, father, son, friend. Of course, the request to hear the story again is generally presented in the guise of letting visitors in on it. And it certainly does that – helping them to feel part of the “clan”. But the most joy and mirth is usually experienced by those who have heard it time and time.
All of our families and faith communities have these types of stories. Some are hilariously funny, others are deeply moving, still others just leave a warm glow or reveal a distinctive aspect of the group’s life and journey. They bind us to each other, remind us of who we are, where we’ve been, what we aspire to. They act as anchors for our collective and individual identity.
“Tell me it again, Dad. How you met Mum…What I did when I was two…”
As the story gets told we are able, each of us, to find our place in it. We discover our identity as one of the family.
Reading the Bible and gathering together as the church should be a bit like this. “Tell us the story, Dad!” “Tell us about the time you helped David deal to Goliath”. “What about the time Jesus knew exactly everything about that woman at the village well, and how surprised and shocked she was when he told her things only a close friend would know.”
And of course, the Big Story is not finished yet. There is the opportunity to add to the story and to contribute our own unique part. For “The Acts of the Apostles” – which John Stott has noted really should be “The Acts of the Holy Spirit through the Apostles” has not yet been completed. It is an ongoing story, calling us to be characters in the story, to play our part.
These are the stories we can develop and tell in our faith communities. Just like our own family stories are being added to all the time, building memories, so too this should happen in our churches.
Why we need help in remembering
God knows we are liable to forget. It’s part of our human condition. He knows the power of symbols and habits and celebrations and ceremonies to remind us – to recall and keep alive what is important to us.
Every time I attend a wedding ceremony and I hear the vows being read and the promises being made, they remind me of the commitment I have made years before to the person sitting next to me (that’s my wife, Jill!) The symbols and ritual act as triggers to my memory.
The Jews knew this too. After the experience of the Exodus and the Wilderness, they created rituals and ceremonies that focused on a particular part of their developing story as God’s people, reminding them of who they were, who God was, and what they were meant to be about.
To us, the most well known of these festivals is Passover (the start of the weeklong Festival of Unleavened Bread), retelling the story of Israel’s exodus from the bondage of slavery under Pharoah. But there are others – ones such as Pentecost (the festival of the Weeks, celebrating the harvest), Feast of the Tabernacles (or Booths) and the Day of Atonement (these days known by modern Jews as Yom Kippur). And then of course, there was the weekly Sabbath, the Sabbath year and the Year of Jubilee (though there are questions as to what degree this was every practiced). Later in their history the Jews also added Hannukah (the feast of dedication or festival of lights). Still there are other feasts and sacred days as well. So that’s a lot of remembering!
The Jews seemed to spend half their partying and celebrating! No wonder they were instructed to put aside a tithe for some of this – kind of like holiday pay.
As people of the Way, we too have our celebrations. Of course, most central to our faith is the Eucharist (Communion; Lord’s Supper). The pivotal significance of the death and resurrection comes into focus every time we share the Meal together. “Do this in remembrance of me.”
And then there is the sacrament of baptism. Whether it’s practiced in infant or believer’s form, baptism carries with it powerful symbolism and imagery. It communicates in a way that goes beyond what mere words could do.
These two central sacraments – communion and baptism – remind us of who we are and of the nature of our allegiance to Jesus. They encapsulate our identity as God’s people.
And they’re added to by other sacred celebrations that the Church has developed down through the centuries – the main ones being Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Advent and Christmas.
God knows that our capacity to trust Him in the now and for the future is significantly dependent on our memory of experiences of the past. The greater the memories of how he has been faithful to us in days gone by, the more confidence we will have to once again exercise trust in God for today and tomorrow. So these occasions aid our capacity to remember, and to trust anew.
Developing an “ancient-future faith”
Author, Robert Webber coined a phrase a few years ago, which I think fits well here. “Ancient-future faith”. It’s a faith anchored and rooted in the story of the Church and of God’s interactions with humankind down through the centuries. A faith that is intimately familiar with its history and develops practices that remind it regularly of who God is, who we are, where we are headed. A faith that is full of symbols, celebrations, rituals and rhythms that realign the people of God to the truth of the Gospel.
But not a faith that is bound and restricted by the past, by the memories. Rather, one that is inspired and directed by the ancient, to walk into the future, confident to tackle the challenges ahead because of the proven faithfulness of God and his people.
Memory is important to ancient-future faith communities. It fuels their imagination and enables His name to be “remembered from generation to generation.” (Exodus 3:15)
I know that for some streams of faith, such an approach is viewed with deep suspicion. Talk of tradition, of ritual and of anything related to a Christian calendar is seen as working against the life of the Spirit. How could anything liberating and life-giving possibly come from such routine and form?
But such communities are in danger of developing shallow roots and are vulnerable to every wind that comes. Without the deep roots of thousands of years of memory to draw upon, they are more easily toppled. When we are connected to the church historical – not just the past thirty, fifty or a hundred and fifty years, we will more likely remember who we are called to follow and serve. And this will inform and shape our own attempts to be faithful to God.
The power of memory
Building and creating memories. Retelling and reliving memories. This is the stuff of family – both physical and spiritual. For our memory is a powerful force for shaping who we are and what we’ve chosen to give our lives for.
“I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of old – what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord…and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands…” (Psalm 78)
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Hi there,
I wanted to say that I appreciate your article. It’s well written and the application of it has stuck with me, inspiring me. Your thoughts are lucid, clearly communicated and relevant. I just wanted to say thank you.
Sincerely,
Joel