life

Choosing to Remember

/ Linda Coggin / Leave a comment

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge is one of those books that tell a precious truth in disguise.   In Men Fox’s children’s book, Wilfrid is a young boy who lives next to an “old peoples” home and he knows everyone who lives there.  His favourite person to visit is 96-year-old Miss Nancy and he tells her all his secrets. He heard his mother and father say that Miss Nancy has lost her memory.  Wilfrid doesn’t even know what a memory is so he asks everyone he knows to find out in his desire to help Miss Nancy find her’s.  Listen to the story here to discover what Wilfred learned and shared.   

In the past two weeks, I’ve been fortunate to listen myself to memories of four women in particular who have lived decades longer than me.  I realize how important it is for me to attentively listen to what I imagine is a mixture of fact and fiction lived out in their real lives. I envision the years have reshaped those memories. Like Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, we all refashion what we have been given to remember and to share.

I believe that what we remember is a way of listening to our lives. 

In A Room to Remember, Buechner writes,

In one sense the past is …over and done with, but in another sense,… it is not done with us. Every person we have ever known, every place we have been, everything that has ever happened to us— it all lives and breathes deep in us somewhere whether we like it or not, and sometimes it doesn’t take much to bring it to the surface in bits and pieces…Times too beautiful to tell or too terrible.

These are the kind of memories that come more or less on their own and apart from any choice we consciously make. But in A Room to Remember, Buechner proposes remembering as a conscious act for good in that the power of remembering becomes our own power.  And that is the essence of the stories my four dear friends choose to share with me.

Sometimes we are reluctant to talk about what really matters.  We don’t always tell the whole story.  Even in my journal, sitting alone, I disguise parts of my life because they are difficult to face. We leave out the parts that, for some reason, we are hesitate to say out loud.

The strength of the women who trusted me to listen is that they are remembering on purpose.  They are consciously recalling years that have gone by but are not gone.  Each story they share is felt and fresh and alive with both who they were at their best or their worst and who they have become. 

What do I choose to remember?

I, too, am encouraged to remember what makes me laugh and cry and warm with wonder. Remembering what is precious as gold with a new understanding of who I am and given new strength for what comes next.  

/ Linda Coggin / 1 Comment

Our fingers imbibe like roots

so I place them on what is beautiful in this world.

And I fold them in prayer,

and they draw from the heavens light.

Saint Frances of Assisi

I’m only on page 18; still in the introduction titled, “What Is It Like to Be a Fungus?”  I also read the prologue and noted the 121 pages of notes and bibliography.  This book is a considered scientific work; and yet, Saint Frances’ poetic prayer begins the epilogue and I have pondered for days the personal story that begins on page 14.

The author of Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake, tells a story about his friend, philosopher and magician David Abram, who was the house magician at Alice’s Restaurant (made famous by the Arlo Guthrie song). One evening, two customers returned to the restaurant after leaving and pulled David aside. They said that after they left the restaurant (and his magic show) the sky had appeared shockingly blue and the clouds large and vivid. Had he put something in their drinks?  This continued to happen (minus any nefarious questions).  After leaving the show, customers reported the traffic seemed louder, the lights brighter, the patterns on the sidewalk more interesting, and even the rain more refreshing. The magic tricks were changing the way people experienced the world.

According to David Abram, our perceptions work primarily by expectation. We use less cognitive effort to make sense of the world using preconceived images updated with small amounts of sensory information rather than engaging the work needed to form new perceptions. Our preconceptions create the ‘blind spots’ needed for David’s coin tricks to work. Eventually the tricks “loosen the grip” of our expectations on our perceptions. He concluded that the sky changed because the customers were seeing the sky in the moment rather than as they expected it would be. What we expect to see is different than what we see when we actually look. When we are tricked out of our expectations, we default to using our senses.

I believe we “see” with the whole of our lives and there is a gap between what we perceive and what is.  We don’t just see with our eyes— we bring our preconceived notions to the news, our neighbours, and even what we think is true.  How might we open to take in the beauty and sorrow with all of our senses including our heart, God in us.  

Cynthia Bourgeault writes that “…as the heart comes alive as an organ of spiritual perception, we are able to perceive the invisible kingdom of love that surrounds us—and live it into being.”  How do we nurture the Spirit of God in us that changes the way we see the world?

God in us—that heart that opens with gratitude, hope, and love, especially when we put our hands on what is beautiful in this world and fold them in prayer to draw from heaven’s light.