Chocolate Covered Strawberries

There's a shop about an hour's drive from here that makes the most wonderful chocolate covered strawberries. The chocolate is sweet, but not too sweet. The strawberries are moist and when I bite into them the juice runs down my chin. Can you taste them yet? I can.

I was supposed to have one today, but I've got a cold and the trip didn't seem wise. So, here I am, thinking about chocolate covered strawberries, writing about chocolate covered strawberries and missing them intensely. Ah, the power of memory.

Perhaps memory plays more of a part in our lives than I've really thought about before. Maybe it's the memory of fleeting good times that keep us involved with people or behaviors that we would be better off forgetting. Conversely, it's probably good memories that cement our relationships with those who are a gift. I suppose it's the memory of bad times that keep us mired in unforgiveness and hurt. At the same time, it is memory that keeps us from repeating the same mistakes. Dead people live on in our memory and, as Alzheimer's patients exemplify, living ones are as good as dead if memory fails.

In actuality, then, who we are is the sum of our memories and what we choose to remember or forget. St. Ignatius, at the end of his Spiritual Exercises, makes a point of putting memory under the control of God:

Receive, O Lord, all my liberty. Take my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. Whatsoever I have or hold, You have given me; I give it all back to You and surrender it wholly to be governed by your will. Give me only your love and your grace, and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more.' (Spiritual Exercises, #234)

Theologians have written reams of pages that enlighten our understanding and much about surrendering our will, but there's not been too much focus on memory. Considering how it affects our perception of life, however, maybe that's a bit misguided. How we remember another person, what we remember of our interpersonal interactions and which mental paths we consistently walk in our quiet moments determine whether we are positive people or negative, wounded people or whole.

What do the Christian scriptures say we should remember?

Remember if your brother has something against you and rectify it. Remember the five loaves and how many baskets were gathered and have faith. Remember the words of the Lord Jesus. Remember Lot's wife and don't look back. Remember the poor. Remember those in prison. Remember the predictions of the holy prophets...apostles and the commandments of the Lord. Remember what you have received and heard.

There's nothing about remembering any of the times when people did not meet our expectations.

God chooses what to remember as well. He throws our sins "as far as the east is from the west" and says, "I will remember them no more." His memory is flawless, however, when it comes to His love for each of us. God is at his most awesome when He tells the prophet Isaiah, "I will never forget you. See, I have carved you on the palm of my hands." It was when Jesus stretched out those hands for the hammer and nails that the figurative became literal and the mystical became physical. That's a good thing to remember.