Memory

I've been doing a lot of remembering this week. Coming back to Memphis always opens up memories that I hadn't thought to remember in a while.

I was trying to explain communion to my 8 year old brother during church tonight. It's hard to explain why the preacher doesn't necessarily mean that it really is the body and blood of Christ when he says "This is the body of Christ shed for you...do this in remembrance of me." Especially when you're 8. I was explaining to him that we do it to remember what Jesus did for us. But I realized that it might seem a little superfluous to him. Who would ever forget that Jesus died on the cross...it's everywhere...why do we need to be reminded of it by eating some wafers and drinking juice in little plastic cups? Regardless of what your theology of communion may be, every denomination emphasizes that the purpose of communion is, at least in some capacity, to remember.

I think of all the mixed extremes of memories that come flooding back for me when I come home. Some are suprisingly poingant. A lot are really good. Some are really painful (who doesn't have those from middle school). And some are just skeletons of emotions -security, longing, happiness, anger-that I remember feeling, but for reasons that I can't quite put a name to. If psychologists are right, then most of those experiences that I don't remember had more to do with shaping me into who I am than any others.

There's something comforting about remembering, even if it's hard to. It validates the experience. It tells you that there's a reason for it, and that you're not just crazy and that just because something isn't a part of your life anymore, doesn't mean it wasn't an important. The way Adam Druitz writes songs about ex-girlfriends, you'd think he had an unhealthy obsession with them. But I don't think that's true, or at least, not completely. He said once "The worst thing about breaking up with someone is the way people become nothing to each other. Somebody you shared so much with suddenly ceases to exist, and it invalidates everything that came before it. How can something be of so much value, and then no value at all? That's one of the things that hurts more than anything else in relationships. Anna and Elizabeth don't have to worry about that. Even though things didn't work out, they'll always know I valued our relationship and I cherished it, otherwise I could never have written those songs".

There's something sacred about remembering. God talks about it all the time in the Bible. That's why He instituted the Passover. Israel and Judah fell because they forgot their God and what He'd done for their fathers. He knows how easily we forget, and maybe that's why He created religion-so that we would have a means of remembering the reality of what He's already done. And he knew how consuming the ups and downs of living could be. And He wants us to remember the fact that at the specific place of Calvary at that specific time in a specific man He covered all that broken-ness...all those vague memories that are so powerful and that seem to be inescapable. He has power to redeem those.

I don't know what exactly I'm trying to say here. It's cerntainly not an attempt to simplify religion into a set of rituals that are merely symbolic of something that happened a long time ago. And I'm also not trying to simplify sin into a set of vague memories. Memory's important-the past is just as important in making us who we are as the present. And we forget it really quickly. And that's dangerous. Ok that's all :)