Memory

This is not at all to distract from the previous two posts. You guys should really go back and read/comment on Melanie's stuff before you even start this. Seriously!!! They're much more important topics. This is just a personal thing.

Okay, so I was reading Elie Wiesel's Nobel Lecture from 1986 online. And I wanted to share an excerpt:

"Of course we could try to forget the past. Why not? Is it not natural for a human being to repress what causes him pain, what causes him shame? Like the body, memory protects its wounds. When day breaks after a sleepless night, one's ghosts must withdraw; the dead are ordered back to their graves. But for the first time in history, we could not bury our dead. We bear their graves within ourselves.

For us, forgetting was never an option.

Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered. New Year's Day, Rosh Hashana, is also called Yom Hazikaron, the day of memory. On that day, the day of universal judgment, man appeals to God to remember: our salvation depends on it. If God wishes to remember our suffering, all will be well; if He refuses, all will be lost. Thus, the rejection of memory becomes a divine curse, one that would doom us to repeat past disasters, past wars."

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-lecture.html

So as I'm reading this, I'm thinking about myself.(And no, for all of you who know what I was thinking about, I'm not quite brave enough to post it on this blog yet. Maybe someday, but not now. And if you're confused, facebook message me and I'll talk to you there.) Not that anything in my life can compare to the atrocities of WWII, but anyway, I was thinking about how much I relate to this idea, of desperately wanting to forget the past and yet realizing that forgetting isn't the right thing to do, nor is it even really possible. And I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this, but I guess I'm wondering, why is trying to forget our defense mechanism? What should we do with painful memories, if forgetting is ultimately worse than remembering? And how do you remember without feeling like you did about it at the time? How do you heal? How do you turn past wrongs into present opportunities to do God's work in the world?

I guess I should just up my Zoloft, but those are my thoughts and I wanted to share. And I seriously do want input, since I can't talk to you guys in person right now.

Not to distract from the previous post...since I wrote it. Yes, I am unashamedly calling you delinquent bloggers to comment on the post below. But, I wanted to ask a new question. What do you guys think about current day prophecy and how it plays out in day to day life? Some could say that I was prophesied to the other day at work. It was sorta weird. Thoughts?

Hmmm....moment

So, my spark of inspiration came from a somewhat unlikely occasion: a graduation address. These speeches are not where you might expect to receive philosophically or thought provoking ideas, but this was in fact the case of the graduation address at the homeschool graduation I attended to watch my friend Linda (some of you may recall me mentioning her, her mom died a few weeks before we got out of school). Anyway, the speaker was telling the graduates how they had been growing and were taking steps and graduating from stages, but that they were not done yet. Typical topic. But, he was comparing it to the Bible, saying that the whole story of the Bible was the maturing of God's people and how he was growing them. This was an interesting thought because of what you can extrapolate from the idea. How do explain how we've gone from cavemen with crude cave drawings to launching tons of steel to far reaching corners of space? We have problems reconciling this apparent evolution (little "e") or progression of humanity. God didn't mess up the first time and start creating better models. But what if we go with the idea that the whole world is God's work to mature His creation. All of humanity is God's story of development. We are not less intelligent when we are babies, we just don't know as much, we are not as developed. As adults we still have the same parts, but we know differently how to use them. Can we apply this to history? The stone age like an infant, the bronze age a toddler, moving on up to present times as the human race grows more mature? Perhaps this explains the apparent betterment of society, new discoveries, new technology, etc. We are not better, just older. We are people in a later phase of the maturing process of God's people. Also, perhaps this maturing idea can also explain law/grace. Why was the law abolished? Or was it? Why was the law holy and perfect and then insufficient? Returning to the idea of our human development. The speaker talked about how as a little child you have to be under lots of rules. You have to ask when you can eat, if it's okay to cross the street, you must have someone holding your hand. As we grow older, the layers of rules as pulled away as our parents hope that we internalize their teachings and they trust us to make our decisions wisely. If we say that the Bible is the story of maturing of God's people, then perhaps that is a way to look at the 'switch' from law to grace. In their infancy, God's people needed a structure, a law, to show them how to follow their father, but as the people grew and matured, God was able to let His law live in the hearts of His people. Christ's death and ressurrection fulfilled the law, like a parent letting a child go to begin life on their own. God let us live in grace, apart from the law. So, it's not that the law is bad, or insufficient, but perhaps we just graduated from it. I'm not trying to say that these ideas are in any way true or biblically supported. But the ideas the speaker presented struck a chord of logic in me and was one of those 'aha' moments where it was like...hmm...this could make sense of some things. I thought it was a blog-worthy subject and offer it up to the brilliant minds to process.

i miss minter. sad.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, you heavenly hosts.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen.


Did you all know this is the last verse of a longer song called "Awake, My Soul, and With the Sun"? The guy who wrote it actually had it sung at his funeral which was held at sunrise. I think that's a really cool idea. I think I want my funeral to be held at sunrise. After all, I won't have to wake up for it. : ) I miss Minter Lane (that includes you all as well).