Hope for the Forgetful

Memory is an odd thing. The other day, I forgot to snap a picture of the airport parking deck sign that tells you which floor and section you are in before hopping on a flight. Sure enough, just two days later, I was wandering around George Bush Intercontinental Houston Airport, looking for my car. If you were to have asked me, while traipsing around in search of my car, what my best friend’s phone number was growing up 30 years ago, I would have told you without skipping a beat. I bet you can relate.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the strangeness of memory since talking with our friend and gifted author, educator and podcaster, Cyndi Parker, on The Wayside Podcast. Cyndi has joined us on the show twice through the years, but this time we had her on to talk about something close to her heart: the book of Deuteronomy^[1].

A unifying theme of Deuteronomy is the role of memory and how God expands our imagination about stories from the past so they become our own living stories in the present. In Deuteronomy, Moses delivers a series of speeches meant to prepare the Hebrew people who are about to enter the Promised Land. At this point, those listening to Moses are the children of the Israelites. They were first delivered out of bondage under Pharoah and were already showing signs of forgetting God's redemptive work and the example of living He wanted them to show to all nations. Take, for example, the importance of Sabbath rest.

In the book of Exodus, the Israelites are given the commandment to keep the Sabbath in remembrance of God’s own rest during Creation. In Deuteronomy, through Moses, God helps this next generation of His people expand their imagination about the Sabbath by connecting rest to their deliverance from enslavement, saying, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”[2] As Cyndi put it during our podcast conversation, “[the Israelites] were being called to remember that God is the one that redeemed them from slavery and they rest because God is not the slave-driver God. God is the one that grants rest – so they rest because they’re remembering who their King actually is.” 

Deuteronomy recognizes that we have terrible memories. God knows this and has given us graces like liturgy, the Sacraments, Scripture and the Christian community to help us not just remember, but be active participants in the living story of redemptive love that He calls all of us to bear witness to.

[1] Listen to the full episode at The Wayside Podcast. 

[2] Deuteronomy 5:15