Remember

I turn the page of a very good book, anxious to know the end of the thought which had so captivated me, and there, lining the margins, like a graded exam, are comments and underlines in my own hand, from a previous day when the same words had first moved me. I had savored them, chewed them even like a juicy tenderloin. But like almost everything I read they had passed through me -- slowly or quickly, who remembers? -- had not taken up residence in my incontinent mind. Having only been enjoyed but never been planted, these seeds of thought could never bear fruit. Now they slap me in the face. I have even re-read sections of books that I have written, and have forgotten that I had ever said such things.

I could worry that this is a foretaste of what my 87 year-old Mother experiences in the throws of her dementia. Unable to remember a conversation past the three minute mark, she experiences over and over the joy of our visit, every time I re-enter a room. But over and over she experiences the panic of my Father's absence, when he leaves to use the restroom.

The command to remember is pervasive in the scriptures. The Creator, ultimate realist that He is, seems to know that the daily beauty and burden of being alive requires an intentionality and focus that consumes us. The command to remember is a prescription for survival -- the lessons of the past meant to provide a more sure footing for the present, a reminder to give ourselves only to things that matter.

But I need more than a reminder. Like my Mother I find myself rediscovering God's goodness every day. While that is a joy, it is difficult to build on my experience, to add to yesterday's joy, to assemble cumulative total of God's goodness in my life. And like my Mother's panic, I must re-learn the falseness and hollowness of sin every hour.

I round a corner and my Mom lights up: "when did you get here?" I turn a page and there are my marks. The joy of first discovery, the frustration of having hiked in circles, of having tread the same ground.

My journal prods my memory. I can at least re-read the most significant lessons. But what I know I really need is a way of embedding these seeds before they pass through me. Beyond the act of underlining, beyond the act of writing them down. What if my mistake has been to treat knowledge as food -- something to be consumed? What if what I really need is to obey the thing I discover-- to turn the calories of truth into muscle, something that can be used, something that must be used to be kept? Every book I read, every passage of scripture I study, every moonlit meadow I see, every shaft of of afternoon light basking my living room with a rich amber glow. Maybe memory is like muscle -- use it or lose it.