The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never
even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones….
I love Billy Collin’s poem “Forgetfulness” in his collection of poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room.
I was thinking about it the other day when Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything showed up on my reserve list at the library and I wondered how it got there. I must have seen it somewhere and here it was at last waiting for me to read. Hmmm… wonder why I thought I’d be interested in this….
However it got there, I loved it. Joshua Foer is a writer who by chance became a competitor in the national memory championship. It is not only a fun read but also reminded me of something at the core of a life of faith: remembering matters.
Foer notes that the single most common theme in the lives of the saints (besides their superhuman goodness) is their often extraordinary memories. St Augustine wrote about his friend, Simplicius, who could recite Virgil by heart – backward! That he could recite it forward seems to have been no big deal.
In the classical world, a trained memory was the key to cultivating “judgment, citizenship, and piety.” They knew that what one memorized helped shape one’s character.
Just as the secret to becoming a chess master was to learn old games, the secret to becoming a grand master of life was to learn old texts. In a tight spot, where better to look for guidance about how to act than the wisdom of old texts. And how convenient if you carried the wisdom of these texts inside you.
I have counted on the snippets of hymns, songs and scripture that I know by heart (like Psalm 23,46, 101, Romans 8:38-39) to help me find my way through tight spots.
I know a woman who for as long as she remembers has recited the 10 Commandments, 23rd Psalm and Lord’s Prayer before going to sleep at night. Saying aloud these words she learned as a young girl, has helped steady and remind her who she is through the many changes, trials and tribulations in life.
And it’s true: memorizing poetry and prose is extraordinarily difficult. But as the author of The Rhetorica ad Herennium, a two-thousand year old book on memorizing techniques (the same techniques that are used today) says, that is exactly the point. He explains that learning texts is worth doing not because it’s easy but because it’s hard. “I believe that they who wish to do easy things without trouble and toil must previously have been trained in more difficult things.” So how about it? Psalm 139 anyone? John 1? The Gospel of Mark?
But whether as individuals we take on memorizing texts or not, we communities of faith are in the “remembering business”. We are the holders of the stories that remind us what it means to be human, who we are and whose we are. The stories we need when we get lost along the way and forget what is important.
It’s true for all of us that we spend much of our lives chasing the “what’s” of our lives: making lives that matter, doing, creating. But finally, for many of us, many of the “what’s” of our lives come to an end. We can no longer do the work we once did. We learn to give up the things we once may have loved – being in school, playing soccer, going to work, being a parent of a young child, being a spouse, driving a car. And what lasts when the “what’s” of life are taken away?
The church is the holder of the memory of the “who” we are, of what lasts after the “what’s” of our lives have had their turn and are laid to rest.
The “who” is what we are reminded of when we witness a baptism or are reminded of our own, those words of God to Jesus, to you, to me, “You are my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.” (See Mark 1:1-11)
Yes, we probably spend our lives believing and disbelieving and believing it again and again. What it means to live and walk as the beloved. What lasts when everything else, the name of the novel, the plot, have been lost…
Amidst all the New Year’s resolutions we could make, and soon forget that we ever made, here is one that is worth remembering: Remember who you are. “You are God’s beloved child.”
What if this year you and I lived as if that really was something worth remembering?
