Memory Losses and Gains
By: J. Ellsworth Kalas
Let me say a good word for memory loss. With the increasing attention to dementia and Alzheimer’s you may wonder how anything good can be said for memory loss. Well, sometimes it’s a matter of what’s lost.
I experienced this in a special way during my recent annual pilgrimage to my home town, Sioux City, Iowa, and its environs in northwest Iowa. Some of you know that this trip is a big deal for me; it’s my more accessible Holy Land journey and my immersion in the healing waters of Lourdes. I pick up a rental car at the airport and after unpacking at the hotel, begin my trip down memory lanes: the two churches where Christ became most real to me and several others that made smaller contributions, the many houses in which we lived in my boyhood (some are now vacant lots), the schools from kindergarten to high school (only one of which is still a school), and the three public libraries that nurtured my appetite for books (none of them now in library service).
All of this fulfills two spiritual experiences, gratitude and repentance: gratitude for God’s mercies to me beyond any deserving and repentance that I haven’t made better use of my gifts of childhood and youth. These experiences come by way of almost endless conversations with God and with my ghosts. You know about God. I’m sorry I can’t properly introduce you to my ghosts.
Still, it’s probably just as well that I can’t, since you might find them disappointing. There’s not a historically notable figure in the group, though I’ve heard that Jackie Caylor became president of a small college. Mostly I talk with Brother Bishop, Sister Boss, and Frank Satterlee; with Sister Earle and Mr. Hardy, Brother Morris and F. O. Racker to say nothing of Chris, Sheldon, Eddie, Wes, Edith, Martha, Frankie, Charles, Fred the list is quite endless.
But what does this have to do with memory? Am I rejoicing simply because I can remember those names?
Not at all. It’s the quality of my forgetting. I can’t get over it. I smile to think of it, and I thank God. Because all of my ghosts, all the people I remember from my childhood and youth, are friendly ghosts. There’s not a mean person in the lot. Not even Miss Morrison, who excoriated me memorably one day in an eighth grade class, and a high school teacher who came to despise me for my insensitive defense of my faith.
But they’re all friendly ghosts. Did some of them, in teenage fashion, seem at times to betray friendship or take league against me? Were we sometimes at odds with one another? Almost surely, but I can’t remember an instance. Those folks with whom I worshiped several times a week: financially poor, modestly dressed, grammatically handicapped: all I can really remember is how beautiful they were and how much they cared for my teenage soul. Did any of my friends ever desire ill for me? It’s possible, but if so, (to paraphrase Joseph) if they meant it for evil, God used it for good.
I can tell you how poor we were by the houses in which we lived, the mended clothes I wore, the places I couldn’t afford to go, and the almost everyday the same menu at mealtime, but at church we sang, “I’m a child of the King,” and I believed it.
So you can see that I’m dealing with some lapses in memory. Or perhaps God has redeemed my memories so that they’ve become selective. Whatever, I recommend it!
Thanks for your article on memory. I was your neighbor in central Illinois. We lived an ordinary life of meager means. But God found me, redeemed me, changed me , called me and gave me a life in ministry I could never have imagined as a teen age boy apert from God. Thank God for His grace, His love, His provision, His faithfulness!
Amen!
Ellsworth, somehow you do it over and over and over again: connect me to a deeper spiritual place with your stories and your words. Thank you!!
I simply say, “Thank you.” This article has blessed me.
What a positive word for the godly influence we can have! You blessed me!
A very good article and one of my favorite teachers.
A few years ago I stood a the base of the Sergeant Floyd Monument and shared a holy moment. As I looked out at the vast American plain, I wondered, What must have that vantage point revealed to Lewis and Clark? Yes Sioux City is a holy place in America albeit an unlikely and overlooked one. Always good to read your articles. You’ve blessed me again.
Excellent as always. D. D.