The Problem with Memory

"I consider the days of old, and remember the years of long ago." -Psalm 77: 5

Most of you probably know by now that Memorial Day is one of my favorite holidays. Perhaps it is just the time of year, when spring is in full bloom, when summer with all its promise beckons just around the corner. Perhaps it is because of associations with my mostly blissful and mostly oblivious childhood.

Perhaps it is because of the Memorial Day parades that I participated in as a Cub Scout and later as a Boy Scout.

We would march somberly from the town Common up to the town cemetery (still one of my favorite spots, though more poignantly now because of what it holds), with its lovely views out over the bay, where an honor guard from the local maritime academy would fire a volley. Then we would march back downtown to the town dock, where another volley would be fired and a wreath laid upon the water and left to float wherever the tide might take it. I always wondered where that might be, and whether that wreath would eventually find its way out of the bay and into the open ocean. I thought of lost sailors, and the vastness of the sea, and I hoped that it would.

I suppose I was much more patriotic in those days. After all, my father’s generation were WW II veterans, who had fought for a good, or at least a necessary, cause. They were still heroes to me. I grew up on those old WW II movies. For a kid, I think I knew a lot of history, and fortunately I had a lot of time to be alone and think. I grew up in a town where the American Revolution was actually fought, and I was always fascinated by the American Civil War, and Lincoln, and all of that history played in my imagination, even in those long-ago, childhood days.

Memory is one of my favorite subjects. Mostly my memories are good, thank God, or at least they are tolerable. Over the years, I have preached a lot of sermons about memory, most of them about the positive aspects of memory and remembering.

But we all know that memories can be both good and bad. We know also that memory can be abused: particularly what is called the collective memory is susceptible to abuse. Some memories would be better off forgotten. In Eastern Europe, for one recent example, we have seen what can happen when events of the distant past are remembered as if they happened only yesterday. The terrible war and atrocities in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990’s proved yet again that memory has a dark side, that memory can be manipulated with predictably disastrous results. Some memories would be better off forgotten.

Is there any way that Jews and Palestinians can ever overcome their collective memories? Or Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland? We say, of some things, that we must "never forget." But perhaps we should. Perhaps it would be better if we did.

And, of course, for those who have actually fought in wars, or suffered other traumatic experiences, been physically or mentally abused, or had lousy childhoods, memory can be a terrible burden to bear. As Donald Murray wrote in the morning’s reading, "Many . . . who served under fire will try not to remember, and we will fail. . . . There is no peace for most of us who live the nightmares and daymares of war for the rest of our lives."

Perhaps childhood seems so blissful precisely because it is mostly unencumbered by memory. We experience everything for the first time. Later on, it is hard to have an original relationship to anything without some memory inserting itself, for better or worse, in the middle of an experience. Whether good, bad, or indifferent, memory is always there to color whatever it is that we are observing or experiencing. Sometimes we cannot escape our memories, and sometimes we would like to.

I still remember my first trip out to Minnesota. Everything was new to me: the huge sky, the distant horizon, the vastness of the prairie. It was a revelation in landscape, and it was liberating. Even the names were different. And there were no memories to interfere with the experience of it.

Now, when I drive out to the west, I try to remember how that felt, but there are so many memories, both good and sad, that intervene, that it is difficult. There are the now familiar landmarks, and all of the accumulated associations with people and places and events. My first child was born there. I performed my first funeral there. I was so much younger, then. On one level, it is all wonderful, but on the other it is an emotional burden that I must carry. And every time I go there, the load gets heavier.

As we age, memory can become a big problem, and not just because we can’t remember things. Sometimes, as Donald Murray suggests, we remember too much. Would that we could forget, sometimes.

Memory, it seems to me, has profound theological implications. Memory, one could almost argue, is what makes us human. Memory is what makes us capable of ethics: of knowing right from wrong and good from bad. Memory is what enables us to love. (Unfortunately, it is also what allows us to hate.) Memory is what gives life its meaning, because without memory, as we know, life soon becomes meaningless. We mostly all fear the loss of our memories, because they make us who we are.

It is clear that in the western religious tradition, memory is central. The Bible instructs its readers over and over again to remember and not to forget the mighty works of their God. And it pleads with God not to forget us. Psalm 77 is typical of this concern:

I cry aloud to God,
      aloud to God, that he may hear me.
In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
      in the night my hand is stretched out
      without wearying;
      my soul refuses to be comforted.
I think of God, and I moan;
      I meditate, and my spirit faints.

You keep my eyelids from closing;
      I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
I consider the days of old,
      and remember the years of long ago.
I commune with my heart in the night;
      I meditate and search my spirit:
"Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again
      be favorable?
Has his steadfast love ceased forever?
      Are his promises at an end for all time?
Has God forgotten to be gracious?
      Has he in anger shut up his compassion?"
And I say, "It is my grief that the right hand
      of the Most High has changed."

I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord;
      I will remember your wonders of old.
I will meditate on all your work, and muse
      on your mighty deeds.
Your way, O God, is holy.
      What god is so great as our God?
You are the God who works wonders;
      you have displayed your might
            among the peoples.
With your strong arm you redeemed your people,
      the descendents of Jacob and Joseph.

When the waters saw you, O God,
      when the waters saw you, they were afraid;
      the very deep trembled.
The clouds poured out water,
      the skies thundered;
      your arrows flashed on every side.
The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind;
      your lightnings lit up the world;
      the earth trembled and shook.
Your way was through the sea,
      your path, through the mighty waters;
      yet your footprints were unseen.
You led your people like a flock
      by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

The problem with memory, of course, is that sometimes we want to forget, and we can’t. In a recent newsletter column, my colleague Phyllis O’Connell has written,

Maybe it's this beautiful every spring. Maybe we just forget, or maybe it really does get lovelier each year. Maybe the colors are more vibrant, the blossoms more fragrant, the trees more full, the flowers more prolific.

I often think that when I come to die, what I’ll miss most is how beautiful it is on earth. How beautiful the blue sky is with the green grass and the yellow sun. Add a sparkling ocean with white caps and then try to imagine a heaven that could top it.

And yet there is sadness to this beauty all around us, because we know it won’t last. Even now we watch the forsythia fade and the first brave daffodils disappear.

T. S. Eliot wrote, "April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain."

There is something haunting about spring’s beauty. There’s something haunting about all this newness and promise and hope everywhere. If we were in charge of Nature, it’s likely we’d be more cautious in how we would let this dead land come to life. No doubt, we’d move more slowly.

I think the mixing of memory and desire is the hard part, writes Phyllis. We crave the newness and possibility, like youth just setting forth, but our memories hold the knowledge of how fleeting it all is, like youth that disappears on us without so much as even a hint that it’s moving on and won’t be back.

And so we are left with this dilemma: wanting sometimes to forget, needing sometimes to forget, sometimes even briefly forgetting, but needing even more to remember: to remember, lest we fail to savor and appreciate that all we have learned, from hard experience, is fleeting and perishable and once-only.

May we have those occasional moments of forgetfulness, when what is old is new as this new day, when everything again seems possible, and our hope is renewed. But may we also be blessed with memory, to remind us, through all our days, of what is most precious: of all that has blessed our lives, of all that has made us who we are, of all that has made our lives worth living. So may it be. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock