Touchstones of Memory
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by Tilden Edwards
Recently, at the second residency of one of Shalem's extension programs, a busy pastor told me that he kept a picture of his program class on top of his office desk. He did this, he said, to remind him of the excitement he experienced in that first residency. He also has added a holy icon to his wall, which has become a reminder of the kind of excitement he felt as he prayed with an icon.Normally I avoid the use of the term "excitement" to describe spiritual awareness, because it so often connotes a contrived bubble of emotional hype. But I think this pastor was speaking of something much more substantial. As I would put it, such spiritual memories remind me of the effulgent Divine Sea in which we swim, our mutual involvement in a Life so much larger than our own. Sometimes we're given a special glimpse of this Largeness. We stutter to word our particular experience in many different ways. My own experience finds me speaking of such things as divine love, radiance, freedom, call, and a stripping away of narrowing attachments.
Our deep souls want to remember and be grounded in this awareness in daily life. But such spiritual memory I think is different from more temporal memories. Deep spiritual memory is too fine for the descriptive capacity of our normal consciousness to do it justice. It's so fine that it slips through the cracks of our word-forms. Sometimes it's so fine that we can begin doubting that anything real has happened. At other times our minds can reduce what's happened to too-small categories: we think we understand more than we do. The paradox to me is that the fineness of spiritual awareness can lead my normal mind to feel that what I'm experiencing is too intangible to be real, while at the same time a different faculty of knowing senses that it is the most substantial reality in my life. It's just too fine for my mind to grasp. If I remain open in trust to the larger Truth showing itself in these memories, though, and don't over-grasp for comprehension, then those remembered touches can become touchstones that draw me to the Real One.
Since our words for this permeating Reality so easily fail us, sometimes I think it's best to remain silent and just trustingly, alertly bask in its presence-beyond-words. Sometimes, amidst all the temptations of daily life that would narrow our consciousness and wills away from this Presence, a picture or some other reminder helps show us our larger home, as for that pastor.
At the heart of ancient Christian tradition (and in a different way in Jewish tradition) stands a special intimate collective action based on a touchstone of memory that also can draw our wills and consciousness to the living Presence. At the center of the Eucharistic prayer Jesus' words are remembered, "Do this in remembrance of me." Then those so willing eat and drink, ingesting in faith divine love incarnate.
I think every attempt to reduce this sacred meal to an act understandable by our minds is like trying to domesticate our personal spiritual touchstones to what our minds can grasp. Yes, our minds will have their due in trying to make some sense out of this remembered invitation of Jesus. But the results can reduce God to our minds' comprehension rather than opening our souls to a mystery so much larger than our minds can grasp. After its valiant attempts to apply the gift of our minds, theology at its best will remind us that its final function is to guard the holy mystery from attempts to capture it in mental categories. This is theology's great act of humility: its willingness to recognize the limits of the mind's way of knowing sacred reality.
Each of us has particular touchstones of spiritual memory in our lives. Some belong to us more personally, others we share in a larger spiritual tradition. I think these are not memories of the divine that are frozen in time and cut off from the present, drawing us nostalgically backward. Rather, they are manifestations of an eternal divine flowing that forever seeks to open us in the present moment to its enlarging grace.
The grace of the present moment probably will not involve dramatic openings or callings. More likely we will experience the faintest sense of desire for divine presence that opens us a little to God amidst our immediate thoughts and actions. Remembering the more impressionable touchstones of our spiritual life can help us notice such faint-to-our-consciousness grace that's always at hand. Confidence in an always-grace-full presence can give us a certain fearlessness and, in the truest sense, excitement, as we walk through the day.
© 2008 The Shalem Institute.