Tag: memory

A Salty Reminder

Life is a pendulum swinging between remembering and forgetting. Often I find myself on the forgetting end of the swing.

The poet Rita Dove described something that goes on in my mind in her poem “Lucille, Post-Operative Years”–

Most often she couldn’t
think–which is to say she thought of
everything, and at once–
…

Then, sudden as a wince,
she couldn’t remember a thing.
…

What bothered her: the gaps
between.

(Those are connected excerpts from three different stanzas)

I can have what feels like so much spinning around in my head that I can’t think of the name of the person standing in front of me, who I’ve known for years and I can tell you everything about them, but their name is missing. Or I can be talking along towards a point and have it fly out of my head and leave me looking for a direction to catch up to it.

Meanwhile I have memories from the first 20 years of my life that are crystal clear and in context like they just happened. Oh, but the gaps in between. The mind is a marvelous thing, particularly when it cooperates or shows us things we had forgotten we knew.

Sometimes I wonder if our collective memory works like that as well. There are things we forget that are critical to who we are or who we are called to be.

That’s where my mind has wandered with this weekend’s lectionary Gospel reading, Matthew 5:13-20 (quoting 13-16, “Salt and Light”)


“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.

No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

What if we forgot what it is to be salt and light? What if we lost what that means? Maybe being light in the darkness makes sense, but what is it to be salt?

I am going to stick with Debie Thomas, who I have quoted a good bit lately from her book “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She says when Jesus calls his listeners ‘salt of the earth’ he is saying something profound that is easy for our to miss in our time:

“First of all, he is telling us who we are. We are salt. We are not ‘supposed to be’ salt, or ‘encouraged to become’ salt, or promised that ‘if we become’ salt, God will love us more. The language Jesus uses is 100 percent descriptive. It’s a statement of our identity. We are the salt of the earth. We are that which enhances or embitters, soothes or irritates, melts or stings, preserves or ruins. For better or worse, we are the salt of the earth, and what we do with our saltiness matters.“

Salt by itself doesn’t do much. And too much of it can ruin things. But the right amount of salt (which was in Jesus’s time a precious commodity) can enhance and make things better. Salt’s value is in its being spread around, added to other things–but not in a way that dominates or takes over.

If we forget that we are salt of the earth and keep ourselves separate and distant or try to take things over, we are not being true to who we are called to be.

Thomas’s essay, “Salty” looks deeply at what is to be salt–something that was precious, something that “does its best work when it’s poured around”, something that doesn’t exist to preserve itself; a calling that is not meant “to make us proud; it’s meant to to humble and awe us.”

What an honor to be asked to help, to be of service. Thomas continues:

“Our vocation in these times and places is not to lose our saltiness. That’s the temptation–to retreat. To choose blandness over boldness and keep our love for Jesus an embarrassed secret… But that kind of salt, Jesus tells his listeners, is useless. It is untrue to its essence… Salt at its best sustains and enriches life. It pours itself out with discretion so that God’s kingdom might be known on the earth–a kingdom of spice and zest, a kingdom of health and wholeness, a kingdom of varied depth, flavor, and complexity.“

I’m really looking forward to discussing Thomas’s reflections on the life of Christ. We’ll see how salty and balanced we can become during our Lent small groups .


These are some of the books that are pouring ideas and prayers and sentences and questions and wonder and inspiration into my heart and mind at the moment.

Next weekend (February 11-12), I preach at Christ Church Easton. What that looks like walking around and how to process it is a different kind of thing. Barbara Brown Taylor in her book, “The Preaching Life,” points towards it:

“I do not want to pass on knowledge from the pulpit; I want to take part in an experience of God’s living word, and that calls for a different kind of research. It is time to tuck the text into the pocket of my heart and walk around with it inside me. It is time to turn its words and images loose on the events of my everyday life and see how they mix. It is time to daydream, whittle, whistle, pray.”

The more often I tuck God’s Word into the pocket of my heart and walk around with it inside me, the more it helps shape who I am and how I see the world. If I hope to take part in an experience of God’s living word, I need to remind myself that I am salt and light–my role is to enhance, sooth, melt, preserve, to add some flavor that might bring it into our world in a fresh way.

Back to Thomas:

“We are the salt of the earth. That is what we are, for better or for worse. May it be for the better. May your pouring out–and mine–be for the life of the world.”

Making Minutes into Moments

“To take a minute and make it a moment is a holy thing,” Fr. Bill Ortt said in a sermon at Christ Church Easton earlier this month. It’s a message he’s been working to get across for a good part of the year. Minutes pass endlessly, but how many of them become moments for us? How many feel like time stops or alters and they become touchstone experiences, ingrained memories, part of our DNA.

I’ve been reading Tim Kreider‘s book of essays, “We Learn Nothing.” In the incredible essay, “The Czar’s Daughter,” he talks about the life, stories, death, and memories of a friend they called Skelly. Kreider remembers he and Skelly driving to the author’s cabin after a blizzard, where a grove of bamboo had bent under the weight of the snow, forming an archway.

“We walked down through that icy arcade tugging on each bamboo tree until we’d shaken loose enough weight that it would spring back up into the air, flinging its load of snow glittering fifty feet in the sky. It was so beautiful, and so much fun, that we both got giddy, laughing like kids on a snow day. Only he and I were there in that moment; now he’s gone. If you do not know someone by sharing such a memory, then you cannot ever know anyone at all. If that moment was not true, then nothing is.”

That’s a moment. I know those snow moments. Reading that took me back to the winter of 1995-96, snow blasting Oxford in a time where everyone just opted to stay home and maybe walk through the snow down to Schooner’s Llanding to sit by the fire, day drink, and eat seafood chowder out of bread bowls. But my memory, my moment, was walking through town and all the way out to the cemetery, in the middle of the night, with a long-time friend, lost in conversation, laughter, memories, and occasional deep thought, completely unaware of the cold or the time passing. I can’t recall a single thing that was said, but the moment is as strong as if it happened yesterday.

Another snow moment (snowment?) happened in December 2009 (pictured above), when we got snow dumped on us like crazy and Anna and I went exploring Easton, taking in the town in an almost white-out. We thought we’d get out and hit the playground at Idlewild Park, but the wind was whipping and snow was pelting our eyes so we stopped and opted for a photo, before continuing our exploring. It’s a photo that stands out in my mind–one I will always picture when thinking of Anna, and the experience of driving through town in the snow stands as a daddy-daughter moment.

What is it that helps create those moments for us? Mindfulness or awareness would be one thing. Being able to look around and take things in and not miss what’s going on around us. Most of us don’t count sunrises. They happen every morning–nothing momentous, right? But what if you make the time to take a few breaths and let the taste of coffee linger on your tongue while you watch the horizon. Or better yet, on a morning that you are blown away by the colors, throw your arms up and drink in the experience fully. Moments are there to be made.

In his book, “The Experience of Place,” Tony Hiss talks about simultaneous perception. He says there is our everyday perception, which allows us drive to places, accomplish tasks, times where we aren’t really dialed in to what’s going on around us. Hiss says that shifting to simultaneous perception:

“let’s me gently focus my attention and allows a more general awareness of a great many things at once: sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of touch and balance, as well as thoughts and feelings. When this kind of general awareness occurs, I feel relaxed and alert at the same time… I notice a sort of unhurried feeling–a feeling that there’s enough time to savor all the sights and sounds and other sensations coming in.”

Maybe we’ve all had those experiences, where we become keenly aware of a smell, and sound, and sight–maybe it’s spurred from tasting something off the grill outside, or ice cream near the river. A time when all of our senses are engaged and time seems to move differently. Mindfulness has a way of helping us be fully in the moment. Maybe being in the moment helps us create more moments?

When I think of the different moments I can call up from memory–some recent, some as far back as I can remember: I can remember my grandmother (my dad’s mother) who died before I turned five, she used to pretend to be the Terrible Tickler from a Sesame Street book we would read together, I must have been two or three–and I can see her, remember her, lovingly and jokingly coming to greet me, even though I can’t picture what her face looked like. Maybe the moments that are etched into our memories, that have become a part of who we are; maybe those moments are like lights in our minds, and as we look back on them, as we recall them, call them up, maybe those moments help light our way, through the everyday, to the place where we can look to, and be more open to, experiencing moments, making minutes into moments for today.

What will we remember?

Remember. Never forget. And we shouldn’t. How could we? But what do we remember? What will we remember?

Those who lost their lives. Yes. Always. Those who responded, went straight into harm’s way to help others? Yes. Always. The fact that we were attacked on our own soil in a way that my generation and younger had never known, or maybe didn’t even think was possible? Absolutely. September 11, 2001, is for us what Pearl Harbor was for my grandparents.

But what else? A friend, Ted Daly, wrote this on September 11, 2013:

“Never forget, and here is what I would like everyone to remember:
Remember the two weeks following the attacks, when we were suddenly so nice to one another? We met and greeted our neighbors, we let drivers in front of us, we offered help to those in need, no matter how large or small the effort required…then, once the third week began, we were right back to the same old same old. Was it so hard, or the effort so unbearable? We could inspire each other to these same acts every day. What kind of world would that be?”

I hope we can remember that. Remember that in the face of tragedy and horror, we helped each other. That we cared about each other. That we didn’t call each other stupid because we didn’t hold the same political beliefs; that we could disagree and be kind; we could disagree and still support one another. I hope we can remember that, because even in the middle of heartfelt and right as rain remembering the lost and the responders, and the horror of that day, it certainly seems like we have forgotten how to help those people, our neighbors and our friends, who don’t agree with us.

NASA posted this picture of the smoke plumes in New York City, visible from space that day.

Station Commander Frank Culbertson, looking down from space, wrote this:

“It’s horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point. The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche, no matter who you are.”

We may never get to see the earth from that perspective, but we can all hear and feel his words.

Never forget, from our own lives since 9/11. After. On September 11, 2011, I was working in DC, for the Coast Guard. I walked onto Ft. McNair and had lunch on the river bank. And I wrote this:

Sandburg and I sit on the river bank, eating lunch, talking about Chicago and how people are. On the other shore, two helicopters take off, bank over the river and fly directly overhead. These are the same helicopters that carried a different President to St. Michaels when I worked there and got to see him speak.

Then, like now, was after. After we looked at machines flying over cities differently. After flying machines were flown into buildings and the President we saw in St. Michaels got interrupted talking to school children; children that could have been my daughters, but weren’t. Children who wished they were in that school because it would have meant they were far away from New York and didn’t lose their parents.

That day, before, I was in Easton. I didn’t work in Washington, like now, after.

Now, I sit with Sandburg on the river bank of the Anacostia, watching planes landing and taking off at Reagan National. Watching Presidential Helicopters flying overhead.

Sandburg’s Chicago didn’t have planes flying into buildings. It wasn’t something he thought about. But our girls, and their children, will learn it as part of their history classes. It’s part of their story, part of our story, now, after. 

Now it’s 17 years after. We say we will never forget. We say we will remember. And we will. There is no doubt. But what will we remember? What will we do about it? And how will it change our lives?

Show Me How to Live

Our senses are gateways to the world. What we see, hear, smell, touch, taste give us our world, in part. And our senses have memories.

Walking the dog the other morning, I was overwhelmed by the smell of honeysuckle. It transported me back to being a kid, building forts in the marsh, sections of which were absolutely and wonderfully overgrown with it. The smell of steamed crabs has the same effect.

The feel of cut grass under bare feet, or hot sand, or gravel under toughened summer feet. The first time my daughters’ newborn hands wrapped around my finger.

Our senses cue up a lifetime of memories in our mind’s eye and in our souls.

And there is music. Our lives have a soundtrack. Mine is different from anyone else’s, though certainly we share songs and groups with others. Anyone who rode in my car during high school heard their share of the Beastie Boys “Paul’s Boutique,” The Specials, Public Enemy, The Clash, and Metallica.

Getting to North Carolina for college, it was meeting Chris Cornell, Eddie Vedder, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Temple of the Dog.

I don’t generally sing, but to this day when Temple of the Dog’s “Hunger Strike” comes on the radio, much to my daughters’ cringing, I am belting it out.

Cornell and Vedder are still on about every running playlist I have. But Cornell is integral.

We all get to those rough places in our emotional lives. When I was driving four to five hours a day back and forth to DC, in what came to feel like a soul-less grind, and my marriage was crumbling around me, it was Cornell, Tom Morello and Audioslave. Played so loud the windows and dashboard shook. It was the angst, the wail Morello’s guitar, the reach and pitch and emotion and questions in Cornell’s voice.

You gave me life
Now show me how to live.

Audioslave was and is catharsis, solace, energy. When I moved down Bailey’s Neck and got my feet back under me, and would run the wood-lined back roads, it was Audioslave time and time again.

Show me how to live.

In finding a job in Oxford at the community center and re-embracing a community that helped raise me, in moving back to town here, and running through town and up Oxford Rd.

Show me how to live.

The night Ava had her big seizure in Pennsylvania and was flown by helicopter to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh; as I buried the gas pedal driving through the night it was Cornell and company playing in the car to keep me awake and focused.

Show me how to live.

As we all returned home, and I was filled with gratitude for the outpouring of support and prayers from friends and family and strangers, and I found church and faith, and would shuffle a playlist on my runs, I could hear:

You gave me life
Now show me how to live.

In hearing and finding a calling and Christ Church and being in small groups and building a family and community of faith through our Alpha program, I hear the same words.

I’ve never met Chris Cornell. His death isn’t like losing a family member or close friend. There isn’t a hole in my life in that way. When David Bowie, Prince, or Lemmy died it was sad to lose great artists. But they weren’t a part of first team soundtrack of my life.

We come to know artists through their art. When we find those artists whose work resonates and enlarges our souls, we know it. We connect with them in ways that makes our own struggles and questions seem relevant for someone else; we feel less alone. Like together we tap into something bigger–in the best art we can feel connected; at times maybe we can hear God’s message for us.

In the end, I’m best leaving the words to Morello, who knew Cornell well. The poem Morello wrote to Cornell after his death is beautiful, moving, and open-hearted and minded. Go read the whole thing. But we’ll leave his last words here:

You’re the clear bell ringing, the mountains echo your song

Maybe no one has ever known you

You are twilight and star burn and shade