Memory, Remembering, and Memoirs

                                    Memory, Remembering, and Memoirs

                                     Guest Writer and Artist: Ken Fellows

       "Forty-three years old, and the (Vietnam) war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet (my) remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for an eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”— Tim Obrien in The Things They Carried.

     Story-telling is a learned skill for those who write fiction, biographies, and memoirs. And memory, all that authors can recall, is basic to their stories. It's intriguing to me how memories are made and stored in our brains, available there either intentionally or spontaneously.

      A recent obituary of Estonian-born psychologist Endel Tulving described how he elucidated our modern understanding of memories. In his 1972 book "Organization of Memory," he proposed that humans have two forms of memory: one is "a semantic form of knowing"…that George Washington was our first President or how to brush your teeth. The second form he termed "episodic memory"…a recollection of specific places and events or experiences'…. "the taste of a delicious croissant eaten on the Champs-Ely-sees."

His work showed that the human brain records and retrieves information via these two separate tracks –and that information seemingly forgotten can be recollected with appropriate cues. He emphasized that the episodic tract is key to writing stories.

      These ideas, controversial in the 1960s and '70s, have been substantiated by multiple psychological studies. Recently, modern neuro-imaging … PET (positron emission photography) … has also shown that two different areas of the brain hold the two memory forms.

    Tulving's concepts seem to be involved in memoir writing. While he described memory as associated with the past, he also considered episodic memory as "moving forward." He called thoughtful reaching back for specific moments "mental time travel—a mechanism for transporting ourselves to a different time" (like Obrien's "joining the past to the future"). This insight into recollection is often demonstrated in memoirs, as in this additional quote from The Things They Carried:

       "I feel guilty sometimes. Forty-three years old, and I'm still writing stories.

My daughter Kathleen tells me I have an obsession …. that I should write about a little girl who finds a million dollars and spends it on a Shetland pony. In a way, she's right. I should forget. But the remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is your life, at the intersection of the past and the present.

The memory traffic feeds into a rotary loop up in your head, where it circles for a while, then pretty soon, imagination flows in, and the traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets. As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come to you. That's the real obsession. All those stories."

     Memories have many synonyms … recollections, remembrances, reflections, and reminiscences. For memoir writers, the basis of their stories is essentially the recall enlisted from Tulving's semantic and episodic brain tracts. But life is messy, and some of our memories only feel true. As memoirist Geoff Dyer has written: "Everything in my book really happened, but some of the things that happened only happened in my head."

    Aging is a fierce impediment to accurate remembering. Another author, Ward Just, in his novel Forgetfulness, describes an older man who offers:

 "My memory isn't what it was. The years wash into one another, a watercolor memory. One fact bleeds into another. Emotions bleed. Faces bleed." The gray-beard then adds –"forgetfulness is a dream state. It is an old man's friend."

     For memoir writers, several forces are in play: accurate recall, vague

 recollection, and terminal amnesia. These three effects are finessed in successful memoirs by the creativity … the art … the author brings to the piece.

Ken Fellows

Joanna Seibert.  joannaseibert.com

Church Bells

Church Bells

Guest Writer: Elizabeth-Anne Stewart

Elizabeth-Anne Stewart, C. 2022

I no longer hear the church bells ring,

summoning me from slumber,

awakening my soul,

rousing my sleeping heart

to a new day

a new world

a new beginning.

I no longer see

shadows playing on the walls

as dawn breaks

and sunlight stretches

through dusty blinds

into my room,

teasing me with vestiges

of yesterday

as I lie somewhere

between past and present

on a bed of solitude—

or loneliness, perhaps.

Oh, the ache of memory!

The ghosts that flit

across the cracks

of my fragmented self,

smile faintly, reminding me

of together days,

now severed by death—

but whose I ask,

who resides within the tomb?

My former self runs

to greet holy phantoms

but they play

hide and seek,

inhabiting my dreams

before fading

into the night.

Do they sleep

in cold vaults

of decaying bones

or do they rest

in the Divine Embrace

that so often eludes me?

I dare hope

they have risen on angels’ wings

but I, for one,

am anchored to Earth,

tethered by questions

that disturb the universe.

Priests and prophets

tread a jagged line

between gift and curse,

between heaven’s bounty

and worldly desires,

between insight

and cluelessness.

Elijah’s mantle

brings no peace

but only the burden of words—

syllables of possibility

reaching to Infinity

or anguished cries

that pierce complacency.

But every mystic knows

that in the darkest times,

Melchizedek’s gifts

of bread and wine

transubstantiate

the ordinary

into the extraordinary,

blessing those

who raise their eyes

to count the stars.

And so the script is set.

Church bells echo

from toppled steeples,

their faint lament

whispering beneath the rubble,

pleading to be heard.

Their chilling refrain

tolls for you, for me,

for a world devoid

of guiding lights

in which perversion

masquerades as passion,

and lies proliferate,

twisting Truth

into a commodity

that indoctrinates multitudes

while those with discerning minds

keep silent.

I stand on holy ground

where shards from St. James’ belfry

demand restoration,

still mourning

that day when the wrecking ball

wrought its worst,

muting their music,

levelling God’s House,

seemingly at whim.

Clawing stones,

scraping for relics,

my bleeding fingers

seek to liberate

their strains.

Elizabeth-Anne Stewart, PhD, PCC, BCC

In addition to her work as a spiritual director, Elizabeth focuses mainly on spiritual coaching and writing coaching. Based in the greater Chicago area, she teaches writing at St. Xavier University, and spiritual coaching at the Institute for Life Coach Training (ILCT); she recently launched The Ministry Coaching Foundation to offer opportunities for continuing education and personal renewal. 

www.elizabethannestewart.com; 

www.MinistryCoachingFoundation.com;

 www.ChicagoWritingCoach.com

 joanna. joannaseibert.com

Lessons from Epiphany 2021

Lessons from Epiphany 2021

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.”—Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

It is still painful to think about and respond to events at our Capitol on Epiphany, January 6th, 2021. First, it was disbelief that it was happening in the country we love.

I go to the safest place in our house, our bedroom, and lie down. Then, the fear that lives in my body about having the COVID-19 virus before we can get the vaccine transfers to the stability and safety of our country. A group of men and women without masks carrying metal pipes, chemical irritants, and other weapons are breaking windows and doors to enter the sacred halls of our country, where our Congress is meeting to certify the presidential election.

All the tasks ahead of me for the day have lost energy. My entire energy goes to fear. Our daughter, who has been in tears, soon calls. We share the news. We are powerless. We both decide to have some soul food while we try to re-center. Popcorn.

 Will our government be overturned and taken over by people rioting? They tell reporters this is only the beginning. They will be back. I see anger and fear on their faces. We both share fear. They mirror my fear.

Preparing for the Epiphany service that night slows down my fear.

I think of our guest preacher, Amy Meaux, the dean of our Cathedral. How will she prepare a homily in a few hours and bring peace out of this great tragedy? I don’t remember what she said, but I do remember feeling the strength to meet the days to come. Spoiler alert! Little did we know that in 2024, Amy would also be elected Bishop of West Missouri on the first ballot.

I go and sit quietly in St. Mark’s for over an hour before the Epiphany Service as I wait for the arrival of the Magi and their gifts. Slowly, I become less anxious. I sense that the prayers of the many people who have worshiped there in the past are calming my soul. I have put myself in a place where many before me have gone to meet God. Their prayers and their love begin to heal me.

Family Systems dynamics teach us that if we can maintain a state of having the least anxiety during any conflict or be a non-anxious presence, we will contribute to keeping any tensions from growing and eventually solve the difficulty. Unfortunately, I know few people who can remain non-anxious, for it is not a human trait.

Staying less anxious, however, is a real possibility. With Grace, we may be the least anxious presence in a situation. In that case, we can keep the arteries in our body from tightening up, taking minutes or weeks off our lifespan, pushing us to become more fearful, maybe even violent.

We can go to the place inside or outside our body where an inner and outer presence makes us calmer. There, we can become a vessel to become part of the relationship or situation that can solve any problems we encounter.

 This is my offering from that day.

Go literally or figuratively to a place of healing in the past, where you have met God, and perhaps where so many have done the same before. Sit, just sit, and be enveloped by a presence that goes by the name of love. It may not be in a place of worship. It may be by the sea where the waves’ rhythm or the sea’s stillness slows down our anxious hearts.

It may be a walk where the trees photosynthesize our energy back to love, back to a presence attributed to Julian of Norwich where “all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

So, we search for our sacred space, where we may find the strength to meet the day, reach out to others, and become the less anxious presence who can hold together in love the people of our family, our community, and our country.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/