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- Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Christianity Today Award of Merit What if our memories are like shells we gather on a beach? According to pastor and spiritual director Casey Tygrett, "We—and all those who have come before us—pick up the experience and we sense it: we feel its edges, notice its color, we smell the distinctive character (for shells it is the sickly seafood salt smell) of the experience, and we try to make sense of what it is. Is it beautiful? How would you describe the color—the tones, the shades, wrapped around the ridges and swirls? Has it been damaged? Does the hard edge scrape our hand, leaving a blemish or a mark?" How we hold and carry these memories—good and bad—is a part of what forms us spiritually. In this way we have a common bond with the people of Scripture who also had a sensory life, gathering shells and trying to make sense of them. Previously titled As I Recall, Casey Tygrett's writing in The Practice of Remembering explores the power of memory and offers biblical texts and practices to guide us in bringing our memories to God for spiritual transformation.
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FOREWORD BY MARLENA GRAVES
THE PRACTICE OF REMEMBERING
UNCOVERING the PLACE OF MEMORIES in
To Holley and the B,who create memories with light and color every day.
Contents
Foreword
Marlena Graves
Casey Tygrett writes, “Without memory, there is no formation, whether those memories are joyful and treasured, ambiguous and circumstantial, or traumatic. We are God’s memory-made beings.” The first time I read Tygrett’s words, I was fascinated. I turned his words around and around in my mind. How revelatory. He’s right. The trajectory of my life is based on my experiences, my memory of those experiences, and what God and I do with them. But not only in my life: American culture, the geographical and cultural milieu in which I find myself, is shaped by collective memories—what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget.
Growing up in poverty in the United States has had a profoundly formative effect on my life. It was at a Christian college that I realized how very poor I was, and I resented it. Not so much because I wanted what everyone else had, but because of the many inconveniences and obstacles poverty placed in my way. Most of my classmates did not experience the tremendous stress that I did. I remembered being utterly shocked that in 1996 a chemistry book was $114. That was just one book. And I needed many more for my classes freshman year. How was I supposed to study if I could not even afford my books?
Coupled with my memories of need are memories of God coming through in spectacular ways for me. I was completely dependent on God to provide for everything I needed. He often used the church—people I knew. But God also provided in inexplicable ways, in supernatural ways, in particular-to-me ways that only God could know and bring a about. It is why I am convinced God exists. It is why I am confident God is a good Father despite the presence of evil in the world and my unanswered questions about the problem of evil. God intervened in my poverty-stricken life, where I had no networks or connections. Yes, I resented the material obstacles and suffering poverty presented, but looking back, I can honestly sing along to “Broke” by Lecrae, a rap artist who happens to be a Christian: “Being broke made me rich.” I can testify that God does not break a bruised reed and that he listens to the cry of the poor. And not just the financially poor—but to those impoverished in other ways. My life and memories are God-haunted. As Tygrett explains, “We engage our memories in tandem with God because they are the starting points for who we are now and who we have yet to become.”
Tygrett does not merely psychologize or spiritualize our memories and their formative aspects. As a good counselor, pastor, spiritual director, and yea even theologian, Tygrett knows that we are not Gnostics. Our memories and the spiritual formation that flows from them affect our whole beings, our bodies. We incarnate our memories and even the trauma of our ancestors. Tygrett points to cutting edge neuroscience and epigenetics to explain how our body recalls generations of trauma (or even joy). To engage our memories in tandem with God, we have to face them; not because we are sadists, but because it’s only in facing them and their effects in our lives that they can be “redeemed” (as Tygrett notes) so that we can move forward.
In spiritual formation we might often ask ourselves how we are going to change today or how we might experience God today. However, as Tygrett deftly points out, “We rarely ask, How did I come to the habits and actions I’m taking today?” This is important. Why is it that I struggle in certain situations and not in others? What do God and memory have to do with it? Engage with Tygrett’s words and wisdom carefully, and you will discover why it is so important. This book makes a definite contribution to the realm of spiritual formation, and I for one will continue to ponder Tygrett’s words and wisdom. You made a good decision to pick up this book. I am happy to recommend it to you. If it has been helpful, let Casey Tygrett know too. I sure will.
Introduction
A Question Before Remembering
Everything must have a beginning . . . and that beginning must be linked to something that went before.
As I recall . . .
We were making the long trek from Rockford, Illinois, to Naperville, Illinois. Perhaps this trip isn’t as long as many cross-country journeys, but there are times when a drive through cornfields and into the warehouse-dense Chicago suburbs feels near to eternity.
The acres of corn and soy stretched in either direction. As the expressway wove into the suburbs, with warehouses and manufacturing plants rising over the cropland, we listened to our favorite podcast, Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me.
My daughter, moving into an age when she was old enough to understand sarcasm, chuckled from the back seat and smoothed the miles that passed underneath us.
Our exit approached, and as we turned from the artery of a Chicago expressway to the veins of the crisscrossing local roads, the podcast hosts talked about a new study that found a certain type of alcohol was excellent in the fight against osteoporosis —tequila.
Margarita sales among seniors likely went up exponentially after this study, but that’s merely speculation.
We laughed together at the curious story and continued on our journey. Going to visit the grandparents was a regular occurrence, which made it all the more interesting when we took the same trip some weeks later.
The same expressway passed beneath us, and when we took that same exit my daughter said, “Hey, this is where we heard that thing about tequila.” I believe the phrase you’re looking for right now is “Train up a child in the way he should go . . .” (Prov 22:6 KJV).
From that day on, every time we hit the exit we spoke its new name: Tequila Road. I honestly can’t recall the actual name of that exit. However, the random news report is now part of Tygrett family lore.
Why is that?
TO REMEMBER OR FORGET
Why can I remember the hospital transport person who graciously pushed my wife’s wheelchair as we left the hospital when my daughter was born, but for the life of me, I cannot remember his name? While his name might escape me, his gentleness and candor do not.
I do remember he had a stoop in his stature and a quiet smile on his face as he handed us a homemade CD (yes, back in the day) of songs that he thought best celebrated a new life coming into the world. Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” was the opening track.
That I remember. Sitting at the keyboard right now, however, I couldn’t tell you my schedule for tomorrow unless at least one piece of technology in my life decides to ding.
Why is that?
Why can my wife remember all the details of our first date but little about our honeymoon?
Why can I remember with clarity the color of the tiles in the church basement where, in three weeks’ time one November, we mourned the passing of both my great-uncle and my great-grandfather?
Neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran says, “How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos?”1
I would be content most days with remembering my schedule and my Google password.
The real question here is simply, Why do we remember some things and not others? Why do we hold memories from nearly thirty-five years ago in the vault, while a conversation from thirty-five minutes ago might slip into oblivion?
Is it more than just brain function? Is there something deeper fastening those moments into my mind? What is the purpose of what we do remember?
A step further and we ask this question: Does God find anything of value, anything helpful and constructive, in our lives of archived memories? Does he work with both what we retain and what we fail to remember? Memories come to us all the time: sitting in traffic, when we take in a certain smell, or when we watch something happen that we are certain has happened before. Déjà vu, they call it, or the “black cat” in The Matrix.2
What role do these slippery scenes have in the very real and deep work of living eternally with Jesus starting here and now? Do they contribute anything to the way of savoring life that Jesus gives “abundantly”? (Jn 10:10).
THE TOPIC AT HAND
The question of memory—specifically what memories mean in light of our life of faith—has always been with me. I suppose memory and memories have been the subtext for all pastoral work I have done in the last twenty-two years.
Helping people remember the story of the gospel, to remember times when they were close to God, and to bring to mind memories of life and hope that keep them going—these are all part and parcel of walking with others, walking with Jesus.
It hasn’t escaped me, however, that even with this powerful subtext we are tempted to say, “The past is behind us. It doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant.” Perhaps I would have agreed with these statements before, but today I believe that memories (and memory) matter. Even though transformation is seen as a future-oriented work, memory matters in the sacred work of spiritual transformation.
So why bother with a conversation about memory, and again does God have anything to do with our recall?
This is the critical question that sets into motion the conversation that we have in front of us. It is a conversation with God, in God’s presence, and one that is important to our spiritual growth and transformation.
My hope is to invite you to this conversation in all the many and varied ways that it is present in our comings and goings through life with Jesus. In this book you will encounter reflections on memory as it comes to light in large sections of the Bible. At the end of each chapter you will find either a “Practice” or a “Pause.” Since spiritual formation is about both being and doing, it makes sense to have both work and rest included. You are welcome to do both.
I encourage you to spend time with each practice or pause and allow the content of the chapter to draw you to prayer, silence, or action based on what you have heard. The practices may take some time, so give yourself space to come back to each practice or pause when you have time.
Now, as in most cases, the best place to start is on a beach.
WE ALL GATHER SHELLS
One of my favorite places in the world is Grand Cayman, one of the beautiful Cayman Islands in the middle of the Caribbean. For what it’s worth, the times we have gone to Grand Cayman as a family have been at the tail end of tropical storm season. While we risked our lives for the beauty, it was also 75 percent off the peak season cost.
The risk is well worth it.
We have pictures of my daughter walking the beach at various heights and life stages, leaving progressively larger footprints in the sand. We spent many evenings watching for the “green flash”—a serendipitous moment where the sunset meets the horizon and a brief, brilliant flash of green light hits the sky. We never captured the green flash, but we never ceased to search for it either.
As we walked the beach at night with our skin and spirits tired from the hot days near the equator, we would search for shells. Some of those shells sit in a glass jar not far from where I’m writing—they have accompanied us through two moves, not to mention surviving the plane ride back to the States.
They are gentle signs of our presence in a place and time in the past. We saw them, felt them, placed them in a cup and valued them enough to pack them wrapped in our underwear so they would survive the flight unharmed.
The shells are an apt image for our memories. We walk through life encountering God, gore, and grace, and we collect those experiences along the way. We then weed through the shells, keeping some and letting others topple into the surf, and those we keep become a fixed item from a moment in time—a memory.
The memories build, and we are able to bring the jar out and show them to friends and family and tell the story this collection of memories carries. My daughter has grown up gathering shells, and she has learned the script for how we conduct ourselves on the beach at night. Perhaps one day she’ll take her kids to the salt-washed shores as well.
The imagery of gathering shells helps me understand both how we come to have and hold our memories, and what critical significance they hold for our formation with Jesus. The framework of experiences, memories, stories, and scripts is one that we will return to throughout the book. It will serve as a foundation for us as we examine not only how memory affects us but also how the Scriptures and the Spirit guide us in being formed through the content of our memories.
Perhaps as we begin, the best thing you can do is to imagine your memories as gathered shells, textured and colorful, laid out in front of you. As you look at them, ask yourself these two simple questions: What do I recall? Why?
Bring out your shells. We now begin to remember.
1
How We Got Here
How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We’re all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories.
I woke up this morning and made my usual half-hearted slap at the table beside the bed. The slap, intended to shut off my alarm, happens every morning. Even though my unconscious aim should be far better than it is, I never seem to turn it off on the first attempt. Through many trials, I finally switched it off.
I slid sideways out of bed, my feet touched the floor, and I began the journey to find some clothes. At that point, I hadn’t actively given thought to what I was doing. I don’t have to think through how to stand up; I don’t have to analyze the steps toward swinging my arm at the bedside table. These are embedded deep in what is called my nondeclarative memory, the memory we use for well-worn habits and rituals that require little to no conscious thought.1 This memory seeps into my limbs, causing my body to operate more or less independently.
Now, trying to find my clothes is a different story. I’m reaching back to eight or nine hours ago when I took those clothes off and laid them, well, where did I lay them? Oh yes, on the chair. I knew that. There they are.
What emerges in this illustration is that there are several stories at work in my common movements. The story comes to mind, for instance, of why we bought the chair in the corner of our bedroom. Which of course is tied to the story of how we decided to buy the house with the bedroom that required the chair in the corner, a story that lives just around the corner from why we bought a house in the town we currently live in. From there, we see quite clearly the story of why we left the town we lived in before.
I also carry deeper whispers: experiences, events, happenings, messages repeated to me throughout childhood, the bigger designs and desires of my life, and the bigger dramas of my relationships and inner world. I carry memories of being loved or being ignored, being encouraged or discouraged.
They all come with me. They are my—our—companions, our friends.
This is the stuff of our every day. We all wake up in the morning, and we walk. We do things. We make things. We remember to pick up dry cleaning, remember the shortcut to work if traffic is bad, and remember our child’s favorite color or sandwich or shirt. We slap the alarm and search for our pants in the dark. We have daily memories that shape everything that we do.
But why do we do what we do—in the way that we do it? Why don’t we do otherwise?
MEMORY-MADE PEOPLE
Pioneering neuroscientist Eric Kandel says,
Without the binding force of memory, experience would be splintered into as many fragments as there are moments in life. Without the mental time travel provided by memory, we would have no awareness of our personal history, no way of remembering the joys that serve as the luminous milestones of our life. We are who we are because of what we learn and what we remember.2
When it comes to our engagement with God and our formation around the life and teachings of Jesus, these memories come with us; they help make us, so to speak. We are at work in the renewal, care, and growth of our souls, and as Dallas Willard says, our soul is “that aspect of your whole being that correlates, integrates, and enlivens everything going on in the various dimensions of the self.”3
Without memory, there is no formation, whether those memories are joyful and treasured, ambiguous and circumstantial, or traumatic. We are God’s memory-made beings.
In other words, everything that is true of us has been etched into our souls from our memories of life with God, self, and others. We lose our selves when we lose our memories, and without our memories, growth and formation simply wander into oblivion.
In fact, every person alive today is living a certain way because of their memories and the stories that result. Throbbing beneath the surface of thoughts, words, attitudes, and perspectives are dramas built on ground that ran beneath their feet long ago.
Without memory, there is no formation, whether those memories are joyful and treasured, ambiguous and circumstantial, or traumatic. We are God’s memory-made beings.
Of course, the “memory” that connects most deeply to our formation isn’t whether or not we can remember our online passwords (it may be time to change all of my passwords to “Forgot My Password”) or our grocery list.
Instead, the kind of memory we’re talking about is the embedded recall of lived experiences, the experiences that make us who we are and give our spiritual lives the raw material for transformation through God’s Spirit. So, what do we do with that rough, unkneaded clay?
It is here we find the gift of engaging our memories: we engage our memories in tandem with God because they are the starting points for who we are now and who we have yet to become. This is the most compelling call we have for a work that will, at times, feel beyond the scope of our abilities. However, we have no choice—whatever we do today or tomorrow will flow out of the memories that live deep within us.
Some of our memories are broken and misguided and need to be redeemed. Some of our memories are beautiful and can give us energy for present challenges. Some of our memories are signs of a person we used to be and can give us perspective and wisdom on where we are and where we are headed in our life with Jesus. And we are not alone:
For Esther, “such a time as this” required that she remember the times prior to the present moment.
For Moses, the phrase “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” required that he remember campfires and the stories he heard of an ancient promise now held in the present.
For us, we may hear Jesus say, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (Jn 8:36 NIV), and we are immediately taken back to memories of slavery and oppression so we might savor the honey-thick goodness of today’s redemption.
Without these memories, we cannot become. Without these memories, the narrative of our lives begins to disintegrate and lose its way.
A NOTE ABOUT MEMORIES
Before we can go further, it is important to name a reality that many of us face when it comes to memories. Namely, the things we remember aren’t always cute anecdotes or charming, CD-dispensing hospital employees.
Our memories can be dark specters, unkind and unyielding.
They can be monsters of the grandest design.
Many of us have experienced physical or emotional abuse, failure of jobs or relationships, and failures of nerve throughout our histories. Revisiting those memories sounds like self-inflicted torture, and that reality requires respect and tenderness.
Allowing the Spirit of Jesus to redeem and renew past pain for the sake of our formation is not perfect or painless in and of itself. Any process of change requires a form of dying, of letting go of structures and conceptions that hold us in the place of suffering or stagnancy.
As Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn 12:24).
Even allowing God’s gentle and tender presence to move through us as we draw our memories close feels like embracing a flame, and we can’t ignore the possibilities of further wounds.
Yet we may also see a redeemed, uncontainable harvest from digging deep and bringing out those seeds planted within us. Such is the good and terrifying mystery of formation.
In the pain of our memories, it is important to call to mind the image of Jesus from Matthew: “He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick” (Mt 12:20).
His presence is sweet, strong, and easy—tending to us like a delicate plant swayed by winds no firmer than a child’s breath. We need that presence in us as we journey with our memories; they can be places where the darkest corners are darker still, places where we are already wounded and another blow could be fatal. Though it is not always the memory that wounds.
Our memories can be dark specters, unkind and unyielding.
They can be monsters of the grandest design.
The reality may also be that the memories are the beauty and the present is actually painful. Perhaps we have photographs hanging on the wall of a time we loved, and we are reticent to replace them with more recent photos because things are not as we believe they should be. Instead of avoiding and fearing our memories, we cling to them because our present darkness is too great.
In a strange twist, we cling to memories of the past because the present is too brutal and the future too uncertain. Yet our movement toward our memories in partnership with God renews the present because we are offered the wise and imaginative view of our Creator. We need the savory scent of why that past was beautiful to remind us of what is present in front of us here and now.
It is helpful to move through these memories and the reflections that will come with a spiritual director or counselor. Choosing someone who is compassionate, who knows our story and is willing to sit with us in the midst of what we’re reading and processing is helpful. My recommendation is that if this book becomes too difficult, please move from reading to conversation with someone who can walk with you through the difficulties.
WE REMEMBER WITH
I have memories of events that I was not even alive to experience. Somewhere in my mom’s house is a book of photos, born of Polaroids and Kodak film painstakingly developed to find both the smiles of children and finger-blurred shots that could be anything. I have memories of looking at pictures while my parents or grandparents explain what’s happening, why those clothes were actually in style, and why certain people look irritated in every single shot.
These are not my memories, at least not initially. Once explained, however, I realize my place in the narrative—where my picture fits—and they become sacred texts of my family and world.
Every sacred text, even the Bible, has a memory of sorts; it has a history, a “that which came before.” The Bible itself is so full of memories that the most dangerous way to read it is to pretend that each verse dropped out of the sky completely devoid of history.
It would be like looking at my childhood photographs and pretending they had taken place only the day before. Each woven phase of the Bible comes from stories passed around campfires, family tables, and gathered communities. It is a book of memories.
Every word of Paul or Moses or John (pick your favorite) rises from their own living memoir, just as ours do. They speak out of the memory-laden context of life with God in their own place, time, and situation. They are not our memories from experience, but we integrate them into our stories just the same.
More than that, every illustration and teaching that we hear in our churches and fellowships is full of memories—stories heard, classes taken, experiences endured. Think about the first time we heard the name God. Who was it that taught us? Where were we when we heard that teaching? How has that teaching impacted our life up to this point? How has it formed us? Without engaging who we have been taught God is, we will remain in the dark about our present challenges and future implications.
We have been given a lens for seeing God, and that lens will form the way we see the world. The least we can do is learn the particulars of how that lens affects us. This is the critical value of our memories in our formation.
As Joyce Rupp notes, “Our understanding and our experience of God shapes our image of God and our spirituality.”4
And we never remember alone. We are always sharing memories and the lessons therein with a bigger group: a family, a church, or a Christian tradition that spans millennia.
All of these things make it impossible to assume that somehow today is immune to the past and the future is exempt from today. All memories matter, and our present-day journey with Jesus is reflective of everything that has gone before.
Any transformation that happens in us through the beautiful Spirit of Jesus leaps from the shoulders of those who have helped fill our memories with the stories of ourselves and our God.
For you, is there a memory that has risen to the surface as you read? Something that causes you to shiver because you’re unsure of the vulnerability it creates?
Is there a moment in your past—dark and dangerous or fluorescent and hopeful—that shapes and frames you today?
Where did it begin? Who gave it to you? Where does Jesus’ call to transformation lead you from here? Keep these questions in mind as they may be helpful for a practice at the end of the chapter.
MOVING TOWARD OUR MEMORIES
To put it in terms of a definition, spiritual formation is learning to live like Jesus within the skin we’re in. We are compelled then to come to terms with what that skin looks like, which means we have to reengage the experiences and memories that have tinted and weathered the skin we’re in.
Our engagement with our own memories also trains us for peaceful, civil interactions with others. When we see people acting in ways we consider outrageous or irrational, we might do well to remember that everyone we encounter is the way they are because of their memories. Of course, understanding this does not inspire us to enable but instead to empathize.
We are all containers of shells, some rough and broken and some colorful and fully formed. To count these shells is to know who we are, and to know who we are is to experience the wildness of redemption, mystery, and conviction that come through being “searched” and “known” (Ps 139) by a careful and loving God.
How do we go about engaging with our memories in an honest and transformational way?
Throughout the conversation, we must continue to come back to our key memories. We do this in order for the Spirit of God to help us make sense of and even redeem some of the shells we have collected over the years. The four movements that follow give us footing for engaging with the shells that may rise to the surface. Feel free to come back to these movements as you enter into the broader discussion about memories.
First, we bring the shell. This may be a difficult movement as our memories contain painful thoughts and harmful narratives that many of us have worked hard to release and redeem. You can practice “bringing your shells” in personal practice as you read or as you are accompanied by a therapist, counselor, or spiritual director you trust.
Second, we honestly engage with the implications. As someone who has spent the last twenty years teaching in public settings, I have had my share of follow-up correspondence regarding messages and teachings I’ve given. I have in my personal files some encouraging notes—people finding hope, challenge, encouragement, or enlightenment—and I turn to those when days become difficult.
However, I have one memory—a shell—that comes up as soon as I think about feedback. After one particular message regarding the intersection of science and the Bible, I heard (secondhand by the way, thus increasing the bitterness) that one of our staff received an email saying, “The Bible needs a better interpreter than Casey.”
I have carried that memory forward since 2011.
It has formed me.
So what are the implications of this memory for my formation in Christ? What does this nugget have to do with the way I see my calling, vocation, identity—even my self-confidence in presenting what I’ve been asked to present?
We bring the memories, stories, and scripts to the front, and we engage with the question, What did that moment, that experience, that emotion mean then?
Third, we begin to look at what those implications have created. The experiences and memories we’ve gathered have created some sort of story. Stories about God, ourselves, and others are woven out of what we have experienced. The implications of my credibility and fitness to teach being questioned shapes my pride, the depth of my preparation, and cultivates in me the ability to realize not everyone is my biggest fan.
As we look at the implications of our memories of failure and success, frustration and fruitfulness, mystery and misunderstanding, we begin to see that these memories have shaped us immensely. We have something within us that directly ties to these memories and stories. That “something” is raw material for the journey of formation through redemption that causes the Spirit of God to salivate.
Finally, we explore how the Spirit of God is wooing and moving us through these particular memories and stories. Drawing on the experiences we’ve identified and the memories and stories they have written, we have an opportunity to revisit the daily scripts through which we’ve been living up to this point. We come to a sense of why—even if it is only a flicker—we are who we are, and we begin to ask questions about where God may be leading us as a result.
Are there conversations we need to have in order to re-engage long-accepted narratives that came as a result of our memories of a mom, dad, brother, sister or significant other? Are there practices such as prayer, fasting, and sabbath that we need to engage in so that we can begin to redeem narratives of foolishness, compulsion, and slavery? Is God moving in us so that we may have space to consider our past as relevant to our present and therefore understand the intense need for healing that has always been within us?
As we go, we bring these four movements into our observation and dialogue with the stories of Scripture. In them we find that the complicated litany of our memories is both messy and miraculous. In so seeing, we can take a deep breath in our own formation and release the pressures of perfection. Instead, we lean into the grace of the good journey.
