.jpg)
Our brains are amazing. Granted, I have days when I wonder if mine works as well as it used to, when I can’t recall a name or a detail I should know, but I have to admit my brain is still an amazing organ. Even I’m surprised by what is actually stored in there. I have had two reasons to reflect on this insight this week. First, I saw an online clip of an a cappella group singing the theme song from a show I watched on TV as a child. A show I had forgotten completely about, and yet, hearing the opening notes of the song, I found myself singing along to every word. Weird.
The other thing that has happened this week is that Emily Mumford has started her position as our new Parish Administrator. (No one is more excited to have her on board than me!) As she and I have been meeting each day to help her get her head around life at Christ Church, I realize how much I know about a complex system like ours. One question can spin off into a half dozen related details that aren’t necessarily primary to the original question, but provide some context about the system. It’s like conversations where we note all the limbs on the Island family trees. There’s just a ton of information that I carry around in my head that I don’t even realize until I have a reason to access and share it.
Now, I wish I didn’t have all that information, or at least some of it. I’ve picked up a bit more in the old computer banks over the last six months, much of which I’m happy to pass along to someone else to carry for a while. It’s a more positive version of what Mary Doria Russell described in her 1996 novel, The Sparrow (a book I read in college), in which a person or programmer, known as a vulture, was assigned to another person to learn what they knew or to learn their skill set. In a prescient bit of fiction from thirty years ago, the vultures programmed AI to take over for humans. At least in our case, this is human-to-human transmission, not a computerized overlord replacing us. I’m happy to have someone else know what I know in a case like this, and frankly, happy to be replaced on the administrative side of things!
Our brains and our souls hold on to a lot of things, collected and learned over time. Some we remember vividly with joy or wish we could forget. Other times we forget without trying, or lament that we can’t recall on command. Our memories are tricky things. I am always amazed at the way bits of my faith have been ingrained over time. I have a host of church-related memories, plus a great deal of scriptural and liturgical recall. Part of that is simply repetition, of course, but it’s more than that, too. The cyclical worship patterns we follow shape us well beyond a catalog of words and prayers. The way they make us feel, or the connection we feel to God as a result, has something to do with it, too.
I’m sure we’ve all heard stories of patients living with dementia who struggle to remember much at all, or even to communicate, but when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, that same person can recite it word for word. It’s an amazing grace-filled moment whenever it happens. I hope our faith and worship life allow us to tap into memories of God’s goodness and healing regularly. To remember what we have always known. I recently re-described that some Christians are “Timothy Christians,” as Paul describes in the 2nd Letter to Timothy, giving thanks that Timothy received the faith passed down from his grandmother through his mother and to him.
There are truths of God’s love deep within us, and all we really need is an excuse to remember them. Sometimes it comes from music, like a hymn, and sometimes it comes when we get the opportunity to share with someone else what we have known and learned. I realize Episcopalians aren’t known for the latter the way some other Christians might be, but I think we could be good at that kind of remembering and sharing if we want to be. I wonder what we remember of God and what we forget? It’s worth some effort to explore what we carry, and let God be fully present with us in the process.
