Remembering by Heart: Memory: It’s a Mystery to Me

Facebook reminded me of a post from a year agon Tuesday morning. It was during that late spring heatwave. Do you remember last years glorious summer. The message read “Enjoyed choir singing from Alty town hall earlier. I cheered bravo and offered a round of applause when they finished”. Molly and me and been enjoying a walk on that glorious evening. I had one or two worries and singing lifted me beyond them. Rose the choir leader responded to my post. She knew me from attending a few services at Dunham Road. She invited me to join the choir and I did. It has been quite a year. Last Monday night, one day short of that anniversary, we sang at the Bowdon Rooms. It was a wonderful evening. I am so glad I took that walk a year ago. The last year has reawakened a part of my heart and soul that needed reviving. What was even earlier is that the evening before I recounted that story to a member of the choir who asked me what had brought me there.

It was my first concert with choir as I had missed the Christmas one due to a medical procedure I had last year. I was a little nervous about remembering all the words of the songs. In the end I did ok. I had no trouble with the harmonies etc they were lodged in a deeper part of me, they were learnt by heart. The lyrics I probably got about 90% right in the end. Several of us were talking about our various struggles with memory and remembering. I often make up my own lyrics as I sing along to songs, it is the same with hymns too. One of the other basses only has to read the lyrics once and they are stored in his mind. I have noticed though that at times his harmonies are less accurate at times. I have other friends who have similar memories, almost photographic memories. I have one friend who tells me that they have compartments in their mind where they can store things that are important. This utterly baffles me. I am not aware of what I know unless stimulated. It’s stored somewhere in me, but only comes to life when necessary. It seems I am unaware of what I know. As I was talking about this I remembered a history exam from school. I would have been about 14. I got an incredible mark, completely out of line, with my work throughout the year. The reason was that I wrote an essay based on a radio play I had listened to in class. It seems almost every detail had stayed in me. I had learnt it by heart without being aware I was doing so. When I recalled it, it came to life once again. This tells me something about how I take in life and also how I remember. Many people are not like this. The wonder and beauty of diversity is that it is far deeper and broader than any of us realise. People operate in so many different ways. As I spoke of last week while we do not think alike we can love alike. This is to be beautifully celebrated.

The longer I share my life with Molly I am fascinated by how she takes in the world. This of course impacts on how she remembers. How she is with me in the company of others and is fascinating. She understand far more than I give her credit for. Last Sunday being an example as she travelled with me as I led service with three congregations. At the extra service at Rivington she was up and about before hand taking in as much fuss as possible. Then as the service began she got into her bed in the middle of the chapel and went to sleep. Then as the service was ended she knew and got up as I said my words of blessing after the final hymn. How does she know, she just does.

Now of course Molly operates from different primary senses than I do. It is not that humans don’t use them, it is just that other senses have greater prominence. She remembers no doubt in different ways too. Her ears and her nose are clearly prominent.

I was out walking with Molly on Tuesday thinking about memory. I was thinking all the different ways that memory calls us back, comes alive in us. Obviously, smell is significant in a dog, but also in people. I have been transported to times in my life by smell. I remember once being transported to my dad’s butchers shop by a smell in Dunham Massey. I felt like Mr Ben being transported to another time and place by my olfactory nerve. Music has a similar impact too. Music can take me to times and places in my life. Maybe I’m more dog than human. Who knows.

I love the way that memory takes us back it impacts oh so powerfully on the present and can feed the people we are today. There is a deep richness in it, that should not be lost. Yes, of course we should never live in the past, but we cannot nor should we close the door upon it. I find something deeply holy in such memory.

For me memory is more than just what lives within my mind, my head. Some are stored in deeper places. Yes, my mind brings them into being, helps me communicate these experiences, but there seems to be more going on. They change and take shape in the present experiences too, they have a life of their own which is more than the moment they were experienced within. They are more than my own too. My memories are not mine alone. I love what John Donne had to say on this, it speaks to my soul:

"My memory theatre is a theatre of all things as they exist in the soul. I find them all there in the shapes of my longing, the successive shapes that heart's desire has taken in my life. There are the stories I heard and loved as a child listening to my grandfather on our front porch on summer evenings, and there are those I learned afterwards, reading by myself. There are the songs I heard my mother play on the piano and those I learned to play myself, improvising and learning to read music. And there are the drawings I saw my father make and those I learned to make myself with pencil and ink and watercolor."

Now of course as we share our memories as we recall events and paint pictures and telling stories they take shape and meaning. I wonder sometimes when I tell my stories if I am actually truly remembering the event or just telling the story I told last time. Certainly I don’t see pictures like my brother or some friends would, but I do feel the memory. I re-feel what happened, it comes alive in me, but I don’t clearly see a picture. It’s why in classroom settings images and or grafts can make things more confusing for me, rather than being helpful. That said for others these things are vital. People can be oh so different.

Memory is a mysterious thing and how we remember just as much. Some folk seem to suggest that they have some level of control over this. That is not me, like so much in life it is an ungovernable beast. My memories have formed and reformed over the years and if I have learnt anything from life how I remember says as much about the state of my heart in this current time as space as what actually happened. Gabriel Garcia Marquez put this so beautifully when immortalising the memory of his own life. These memories, these stories we share about ourselves tend to be how we wish to seen in this life, it shapes our sense of self. The truth is though that our lives are largely shaped by the small unremembered moments of life, that which makes up the majority of our life experiences. The stuff that is not stimulated by the senses of the present moment. This is true also for collective memory and amnesia, which is powerfully influenced by current experiences.

Memory is a mysterious thing. It is incredible how we can remember with absolute clarity events from early childhood, while the whole of the previous week is not there. I was asked by a friend the other day, what I had been up to recently. I couldn’t recall anything in the moment that they asked and yet as time went by and the conversation developed I shared with them lots of things I had been up to and how I felt in the moment. It took the stimulation of conversation to being the memory to life. The truth is that most of the time there is nothing going on in my mind. This something I chuckle at whenever I look at Facebook, as this is the question it asks. I sometimes sing back to it “There’s absolutely nothing on my mind”. Until it asks the question, there truly isn’t.

A memory came back to me the other day as I shared meditation. It comes every so often as I sit with others in silence. It is a feeing of well-being that takes me back to primary school. I would probably be about 8 or 9 years old. A memory of being sat on the floor with my class mates listening to the teacher reading the end of day story. Stories that have stayed with me throughout my life, as have some of the songs we sang. It evokes a lovely warm feeling. I don’t see many images, only a very vague one of the room. I cannot picture the room or the children, but I know we are sitting on the floor, some lying and falling asleep. What is alive in my memory is how I felt, this lovely sense of well-being.

Memory is a mystery to me. It fascinates me how these memories take shape and form and often reshape as time goes by; it amazes me how these memories seemingly re-incarnate as time goes by. In many ways it is memory that brings the moments I am experiencing to life, as it did again the other day.

Now despite this powerful memory if you asked what I was doing last week I wouldn’t be able to immediately recall it. It would come as we engage, but I couldn’t find where it was stored within me, unlike some of my friends I cannot remember how many things I have forgotten this week.

Now of course we all forget things and even more as we get older. And then there is Dementia and its cruellest form Alzheimer’s Disease which attacks the cortex of the brain forming bundles of tangled plaque that inhibit conversation between the neurons; as it takes away a persons identity and history as aspects of their humanity drift away. The longer we live the more likely we are to become one of its victims.

Now while the Alzheimer’s suffer forgets, those who loved them never let them go. Those who shared memories with them hold their love, those feelings are felt in that deeper place that cannot be destroyed time. Love is eternal, it is immortal.

For as Isaiah (49 vv 15-16) said, in the earlier reading:

15 Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.

16 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.

These words awoke in me the other day at the concert as we said farewell to our choir leader Rose as she goes on maternity leave. The concert was a great send off for her and will stay deep in her memory. She will of course return and we have other leaders who will keep us in order. I was thinking how her life will change forever as she begins her journey of motherhood. How her past memories and their meaning will change and how she experiences life will never be quite the same again. As I thought of my own life and looked at my lifeline on the palm of my hand I felt connected to all those who have touched my life who are part of my lifeline and I thought of those whose lifeline I am and have been a part of. It is an ever widening circle. Such feelings are surely Divine.

Memory is an utter mystery to me, as is much of life. The diversity of all creation is so beautiful, including every single beautiful person. Something I have been feeling more deeply this week. I am so grateful to be a part of this incredible mystery that is life itself,; that I get to share it with the people I do; that I get to experience the sensations of these memories coming to life in my body and spirit, enhancing my experience of life today.

I am grateful to have experienced this the most amazing trip that anyone could wish to be on. Thank you for being a part of it.

I’m going to end with a little bit of Mary Oliver

“When Did It Happen?” by Mary Oliver

When did it happen?
“It was a long time ago.”

Where did it happen?
“It was far away.”

No, tell. Where did it happen?
“In my heart.”

What is your heart doing now?
“Remembering. Remembering!”

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

Come as you are, come find home here, come find acceptance, come find shelter”

Mothering Sunday, Mother’s Day, whatever its actual true origins, and they are many varied and complicated, is at its heart about coming home to a deep, accepting and nurturing love. This may not be with our biological mothers, but it will be somewhere in some state, I hope you find that place of acceptance, love and rest.

Mothering Sunday, Mother’s Day is enshrined in this image of returning home, and this sense of belonging to something more than ourselves. Whether that is actually of children returning to the family home having been working away or of people returning to the mother church. Either way it’s about returning home to a place of safety; it is about returning home to a place of renewal, of re-birth, not only for ourselves but for others too; it is about returning to a place of love and total acceptance of who we are, exactly as we, no matter what we have done or where we have been, we are accepted with open loving arms.

A place of safety, a constant a home, is vital for anyone to build a life. This often comes to mind when I see images of displaced people, of refugees, people who have no home, who are fleeing their homeland, how terrifying this must be. How frightening to be crossing the water or a foreign land just to find safety. In recent times such people have often been vilified and distrusted, how this must feel I cannot imagine. Thankfully this does not seem to be happening with the refugees from the Ukraine, but it certainly has been in the not too distant past. They are the same people as we are, born under the same sun, living on the same earth.

Welcoming the stranger, welcoming the visitor, welcoming the dispossessed is at the core of every spiritual tradition that I know of and yet so often we reject the stranger. By the way the stranger is sometimes people who have become estranged from our lives and even aspects of our own being that we have become estranged from. For me at the core of the love we call mother is this welcome of all, whoever you are, wherever you have been, come home, come home again soon. You are welcome here as you are, exactly as you are in this moment. This is certainly at the core of my understanding of faith, it is certainly the faith I try to live and practice. It sounds simple, but it certainly isn’t easy, far from it.

This brings to mind those wonderful words, I love so much, by Rumi

“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.”

When we return home to “mother” we are a returning to a place of total acceptance. This is the community I believe in. This is the church I dream of. This is how the “Kin-dom of God”, the “Commonwealth of Love” is meant to be like. It is the prodigal son or daughter returning to the loving arms of the “Mother Community” totally accepted as they are ready to begin again in love.

This brings to mind some beautiful words of prayer, a redemptive prayer I first heard many years ago.

"We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love."

For remaining silent when a single voice would have made a difference
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For each time that our fears have made us rigid and inaccessible
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For each time that we have struck out in anger without just cause
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For each time that our greed has blinded us to the needs of others
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For the selfishness which sets us apart and alone
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For falling short of the admonitions of the spirit
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For losing sight of our unity
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For these and for so many acts both evident and subtle which have fuelled the illusion of separateness
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love

When I think of Motherhood and or the Mother Church, I think of returning to a place of sustenance of nurture where one feels that they can recharge and renew in safety. A place where you are accepted wholly as you are. From here you can begin again in love, you can if you like be born again, be given birth to once again.

Columbian author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, wrote in, “Love in the Time of Cholera”, “…human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but…life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

Our lives often take different directions at times. We turn down a new pathway, again and again and again. Often, we will go down blind alleys, again and again and again. Often, we repeat the same mistakes again and again and again. We do not always learn from our mistakes. This is so very human and even if we have made those mistakes a thousand times, we can always begin again in love, we can always return home to a place of acceptance.

This brings to my mind the wonderful poem “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters” by Portia Nelson

1. I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost … I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

2. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I’m in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

3. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

4. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

5. I walk down another street.

We can begin again a thousand times if need be. We can turn down a new path, or we can return home to the very beginning. It is ok.

It is a curious phrase to turn, or to turn again or even to return. Did you know that to turn or to re-turn was the original meaning of the religious word “conversion”. Conversion is rooted in the Latin word “convertere”, which meant to turn around to transform.

Now for a long time I use to think that if a person had been converted that this was the end of a process. Thankfully I no longer live under this delusion. Today when I think of conversion, I think of it as the beginning of something of the start of a journey. Today I see conversion as an ongoing process, not a once or perhaps twice in lifetime experience. We can begin again even if we have broken our vows and made same mistakes a thousand times. We can begin again in love. We can turn again; we can return to a place of re-birth. Look at “Mother Earth”, at “Mother Nature” she recycles, she returns, she begins again and again and again.

Herein, I believe, lays the association with Mothering Sunday and this idea of returning to the Mother Church. I believe that is the purpose of communities such as serve, Unitarian congregations. A place that welcomes the traveller home, to the loving arms of mother. A place of total acceptance, wherever they have been. Not merely tolerance, as I don’t think that that is enough. No, a place of acceptance, where you can come as you are, exactly as you are in this moment. A place of loving nurture where you can either continue or if need be, begin again in love, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times.

The purpose of a free religious community is to nurture one another’s spirit. Its purpose is to nurture that love that is present deep within the souls of everyone. To nurture and develop these qualities in each other is not just the responsibility of our mother’s, we all have nurturing qualities, and we can all help to bring out the best in one another.

We can all offer one another unconditional love. We say that all are welcome here. This though must be an active quality, rather than merely words. To love each other unconditionally is to love as a mother love’s her only child. This of course is easier said than done. For those of us who have been hurt by those who were supposed to love us to offer love unconditionally is not easy. Therefore, before we can offer that love to others, we must first of all become reconciled with our own pain and our own suffering. This is one of the purposes of a church that is free, to offer a safe secure space where one can come to terms with themselves and their lives. Security and protection are both nurturing qualities of motherhood. They are also qualities which a free religious community needs to help develop in those who come, so that they will feel safe enough to develop their souls. To be who they are and to become who they are, not just to come as they are. It is the purpose of beloved community to create an environment that is secure enough to enable each of us to explore and in a safe and secure environment.

A free community needs to nourish and feed each and all. This requires us to give and not just take from what we find here. For our souls to be fed we need to give of ourselves wholeheartedly. We need to develop both sensitivity and understanding towards one another. We can also learn from the wisdom of others, from those who have walked these paths before us.

Perhaps the greatest quality that we need to develop is humour, one the most wonderful qualities of motherhood. Humour helps us to deal with life’s trials and tribulations. It also helps us to explore those most difficult and testing issues that as a spiritually vibrant community we need to explore. Humour is something I feel as a community we are very good at sharing. I have experienced a great deal of humour and warmth from the folk I serve.

So, on this day set aside to honour Mother’s let’s remember those who have offered us the unconditional and wholly accepting love of the mother ideal. Those who have offered their unquestioning love to us, even when we have broken our vows a thousand times, those who have offered their nurturing heart and encouraged us to begin again in love. Let us also though commit to living this way ourselves to offer this love to all that we meet. To not just tolerate the people, we meet as they are, but to love them and accept them, even if they have broken their vows a thousand times. Let’s offer to them the nurturing hand of love and to do so with real humour. Let us all begin again in love.

Below is a video devotion based

 on the material in this "blogspot"