SERMON: “Finding our Past in the Present”
TEXTS:
New Testament Reading: John 21:25
Old Testament Reading: Psalm 142
This sermon is dedicated to an old friend from 20 years ago, when I was in seminary. This friend was Lumen Marsh, known by most people only as Swampy Marsh. Swampy passed about five years ago at the age of 99. He was a Baptist minister and missionary to India for more than half a century, preaching at the Seminary chapel well into his eighties when I was a seminary student there in my late twenties, in Berkeley, CA.
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I met Swampy Marsh in Seminary and we became close friends one summer in particular, in 1991. I spent many summer days with Swampy, helping him a little around his house for pay, and also getting to know him as a friend. We would take a walk almost everyday to a small local bank, which always held a copy of the Wall Street Journal for him. During these walks Swampy would talk of his many experiences and lessons in life. I heard a lot about his stretching and breathing exercises that he learned in the Navy, and the impact he claimed these exercise had on his ability to preach with a strong preaching voice. And it was apparently true, even into his late 80’s many a young preacher would have benefited from the clear, strong preaching voice of Swampy Marsh. Swampy told me many stories of ministry and life, including one of his most memorable moments when he had the opportunity to have dinner with Gandhi while serving as a missionary in India. Swampy could tell a story, and he had many of them – many important and meaningful stories.
As we get older life changes – for many reasons and many of these are good reasons. Life is suppose to change as we get older.
At some point it eventually becomes clear that most of our life is behind us (Unless I live to be 95 – most of my life is behind me now… I understand). It makes sense that we/I would think about or even long for the past on some days, or just become nostalgic more often than before. Nostalgia comes from two Greek words that can essentially mean “returning home” & “pain” – a homesickness of sorts but not always a pain for home per se, but also a pain for something in the past. And though we’re often advised, by trusted friends “don’t live in the past” – as good as this advise is in some circumstances, everyone is subject to the temptation to long occasionally long for a time in the past – the good ‘ol days, the days when I was younger, or the Golden Age that captures the imagination of many people.
The manner in which we remember this past is obviously important. The things we remember and the things we choose to forget are both equally a part of who we are. There is today a lot of attention given to questions about memory, whether it be historical questions about telling the past or medical questions about enhancing one’s ability to remember. Many millions of dollars are spent on research about remembering and memory loss.
And while that research is very important and will benefit many people, in one very general sense, not remembering is not a mystery at all, it is part of what humans do over time – we forget.
We forget and we deal with our capacity to forget different from other species. We are not ants for instance. That’s right, Ants – we are not Ants. With many species of ants, there is a dramatic life expectancy difference between queen ants, workers ants, and the run of the mill ant-ant. The difference in life expectancy can be a mater of 30 years vs. a few weeks or days. Can you imagine living in a society where certain classes of persons loved thousands of times longer than the rest of the population? How strange would it be if some people among us had been alive for tens of thousands of years!? While the rest of us lived to be about 90 or a 100 even. Well, that is the experience of ants. Can you imagine how that would change how a society related to the past? Certain persons would be the sole interpreters of that past, because only they were there! It would be very, very different. We are not ants and we carry our past through a different process.
I know the scientists who conduct research are very concerned with the question “why do we forget?” ever since Freud we have heard that there is a forgetting process, that much of our forgetting is subconsciously intentional so as to repress things not desirable to recall. No doubt, an element of this is true for all of us. There are things we would rather not remember and so we forget.
But a different question than “why do we forget?” might be “why do we remember?” That is the question I’m talking about here. I’m not a neurologist or a social biologist, and they have some great responses to these questions, but from a point of view of the spiritual journey of life there is something to be said for becoming aware of two very important parts of life that sustain our pasts. One is that literature is not the end all of preserving the past – the life of the past needs story telling, the stories of aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, parents and children, friends and strangers – and these stories are recalled and re-told through the simplest vehicles of life – the actions we do everyday and every week are actions that we have repeated with the generations before us. It is the life of the human community in which we all participate and find our meaning. Whether through moments of struggle or times of celebration, stories are told. That’s what we do.
Memory is not just in remembering, not just a process of the head, it is in the things we DO. Memory or remembering is not necessarily a motionless act of concentration or contemplation, but it is bound up in our story of living acts. I remember that one particular story from Swampy Marsh….as we were eating a bowl of soup. The memory is in the living of it.
In more than just a metaphorical sense, our past is carried around in our bodies and played out in our sometimes unconscious, repetitive actions. Religious ritual is another important example – baptism and communion are actions Christians have performed as they have recalled a 2,000-year history. History has been carried forward through the ritual performances of Christians. We are always living “with” the past. One could say we carry it in the “DNA of our souls.”
Memory is powerful. Reinvigorating this memory can happen in part through our living. Our actions tie us to multiple pasts – Personal – Familial – National – Ethnic – and even our most basic Human past. Prophets, Gurus and Sages from multiple traditions have told us many times that an important part of spirituality lies in the simple things we do every day. The beauty in life is in some of the most simple daily habits that make up “living” – a cup of coffee, a walk, watering plants, feeding a pet, making a meal, getting ready for bed, waking up, driving to work. I call these Living Rituals – things that have great repetition, things that create rhythm in life – from the heartbeat in the womb to the drumbeat of meaningful music. There is a rhythm in daily life and in the annual calendar of life as well. Interspersed within this rhythm are those other markers of memory – the community and national Memorials, former homes, hymns, old friends, an old book, a neighborhood tree, and yes, old stories once conveyed to us in a meaningful way – stories we cherish and pass on, stories that will never be in a book.
The most basic, shared human activities tie us together, activities that engage simple objects and simple actions
A wheel, fire, a sewing needle, a pounding Tool, a dish & cup – these are the things of life that keep the past present, and facilitate the simple stories we tell… when we were by a fire with a cup of cocoa.
We live in the past and present simultaneously. Our memory is in our hands as much as it is in our heads. The events of our lives are connected in what we do, just as the things that ties us to one another. Whoever we are today, regardless of what we remember or have forgotten, we are inextricably linked to our past. We might forget the past, we might repress the past, or we might choose to not talk about the past – but we will always carry the past about - in our speech, in our hands, in our bodies, and in our souls.
It is sometimes nostalgia that takes us back and sometimes an activity that jogs our memory. Everyday we can look forward without the fear that the past is gone. There is no present without the past, and the past lives in everyday of our present.
**Next weeks Sermon, the second in a series of four sermons on “Lessons from our Pasts” will talk about the art of storytelling.
