As a baby boomer, theories of education and learning were shifting as I was growing up. We were the generation of new curricula and new ways of thinking about teaching. New math was a technique for enabling us to complete basic computations in our head as opposed to working them out on paper. The Sunday School curriculum used for much of my time was often called “the new curriculum.” It was the first curricula developed after the union that formed the United Church of Christ. It was a major effort with staff writers and hard-covered books. Some of those resources are classics that have influenced and shaped subsequent religious education materials.

One of the shifts was away from rote memorization of facts in favor of examining ways to think, solve problems and analyze information. Because we grew up in a time of shifting ideas and theories, some of the more established theories and ideas were still present. We were assigned poems, famous speeches, and other items to memorize. There were memory verses and Sunday School awards at least in my early years of church school.

Many of the things that I memorized as a child are fairly easy for me to recall. I can sit down at a piano and play my fourth grade piano recital piece without music. I recite the 23rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer on a regular basis. I can rattle off the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address.

But memory can also be a bit tricky. When I recite the 23rd Psalm at a hospital bedside, I get through it without a problem. Sometimes, when I am leading worship, I fumble over the last line: “Surely goodness and mercy . . . then is it “shall” or “will?” I know that in the King James version - the one I memorized, whichever it is, the next part of the phrase is the other: “and I “will” or “shall” dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I’m pretty sure that people won’t even notice whether or not I get it right if I speak confidently. I’m pretty sure that I once knew it correctly because our teacher, Mrs. Gust was a stickler for absolute correctness and she would have been following word for word in her bible.

A few years ago, we were cleaning out our mother’s summer cabin and in the piano bench was the sheet music for my 4th grade piano recital piece. I sat down at the piano and began playing and discovered that I had a mistake in my memorization. I don’t know whether or not I played it correctly at my recital, but the version I play from memory isn’t note-for-note the same as the sheet music.

Not long ago, I read that the memories of our past that are most clear and most often reported by us are the ones that are more likely to contain errors in accuracy. Stories that we tell less frequently are more likely to be true to the facts. It is as if recall is itself a creative process and that we refine our stories in the telling to the point where our memories become less, rather than more accurate. This particular study seemed to explain why there can be significant variations in the way that I remember my growing up years and the ways my siblings, who shared the same events and activities remember them.

From time to time when my brother is telling a story about our past I will look at him and wonder if he really is the same kid I grew up with or if there has been some kind of a switch. How could we have such different memories if we shared the same life experiences? According to studies, our experience isn’t that a uncommon.

As I work my way through my seventh decade, I have become more aware of my memory. I’ve read that exercising memory and using it helps to keep it strong, so I play memory games every day. I have resisted the urge to turn to notes and manuscripts in the majority of my preaching believing that the extra work to get things memorized makes me a more effective presenter. I worry, a bit, that my presentations, especially of familiar and oft-repeated texts, may become inaccurate as memory fades. There are certain occasions, such as weddings and funerals when I work entirely off of a manuscript. Someone else’s once-in-a-lifetime experience doesn’t need to be my mental experiment.

I am fascinated with the ways I sometimes struggle with names. Most of the time I am pretty good with names, but there are many occasions when I need to ask for help. People that I meet out of the context of an original meeting, can challenge me. The other day a man with a very familiar look came up and gave me a warm hug and I was struggling for his name. The occasion was just before a funeral and I was focusing very hard on keeping the names of the grieving family, some of whom I had just met, straight in my mind. I didn’t seem to have enough mental energy to keep the names of the family on the top of my head along with the prayer I was about to lead, while at the same time search for the name of the man who obviously was having no trouble remembering me. On the other hand I was the officiating minister and wearing my robe, so my identity would have been clear to everyone in the room. His memory task may have been easier.

As I learn more and more new names in different contexts, sometimes I lose the ability to recall the names of people I met long ago. I know that those memories aren’t actually displaced, they simply are deeper. The dynamics of short term and long term memory sometimes escape me.

I know that I will lose part of my capacity to remember as I age. I hope that I will be able to retain the most joyful of my memories.

By the way, it’s “shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” At least i think it is . . .

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