It is the sublime miracle of the human mind: memory.
Ø Elias Canetti

Sarah is fifteen and enrolled in drivers education class. The other day she posed a difficult question. “What’s so great about being an adult?” Apparently she was taking a look at all of those things that come with adulthood that are less than captivating – payments: car, house, clothes, insurance, taxes; responsibilities: meals, cleaning, yard work, home repair. I could tell her about voting, about making your own decisions, about getting married, about raising children who will ask you questions that don’t have easy answers. While all that made some sense to her, Peter Pan’s philosophy of life seemed quite attractive that particular day - - - “I won’t grow up!”

Today, it struck me, one of the joys of adulthood – memory. A couple of days ago I was browsing a magazine rack when the fortieth anniversary issue of Rolling Stone caught my eye. I picked it up and today browsed through it. While I was enjoying what I was reading, I also began to enjoy remembering back to the first issue of Rolling Stone I ever bought. I was a senior in high school. Peter Frampton was on the cover - - - remember him? Frampton Comes Alive was the biggest selling live record ever. “Ooh Baby I Love Your Way” was all over the radio. Rolling Stone had conducted their first readers’ poll – and Frampton was the big winner for 1976. I was seventeen. Rolling Stone was turning ten. At forty-seven, the memory is sweet.

After buying a few issues at news stands, I subscribed. It was a part of my love affair with music, a relationship that remains joyous and intense, though my subscription to Rolling Stone lapsed some time ago, during my seminary years. I am often amazed by how my memories are shaped by music. I appreciate the way Chicago songs “Old Days” and “Take Me Back to Chicago” celebrate the joy of memory. I listen to them and recall my own old days “back on the streets of old Duluth” (Bob Dylan). Some particular songs evoke more specific memories. I can’t hear Chicago’s “Colour My World” without feeling again the heart pangs of junior high dances, screwing up the courage to ask someone to dance to that song. The Cars “By Bye Love” reminds me of listening to that song late at night, driving through the Tennessee mountains with three friends on our way to Florida for spring break. When I hear Miles Davis’ “Fall” I recollect a beautiful autumn day driving through central Minnesota. I was rediscovering jazz, and though I was struggling with some health issues at the time, jazz was “washing the dust from everyday life” (Art Blakey).

Memory is a gift, a rich gift given in adulthood, a gift of grace. Like any gift, it has a dark side. Memory is a present experience, to be enjoyed now. Its dark side is its ability, if we spend too much time with it, to suck us into living in the past, neglecting the present. At its best, memory is a joy of the present, and as adults we have an increasing store of memories to draw from, our own audio-video library open 24 hours. Maybe one of the utterly tragic dimensions to those childhoods marred by violence, war, abuse, addiction or neglect is the way they not only steal the joyous innocence of childhood, but also rob these same people of a store of tender memories.

Now where is the Chicago CD?

With Faith and With Feathers,

David