I recently gave the Keynote Address at the annual Celebration of Remembrance & Renewal of the Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite of Utah, James Lowe Chapter of Rose Croix in the Valley of Salt Lake on Thursday, April 23, 2009. It is too long for one blog post, so I've broken it up into five parts and will share those parts here over the next five days. Today, Part 1:
In my front yard, the trees bear beautiful white blossoms, green shoots poke up in the flower beds and the grass slowly becomes a lush green hue.
We are in the midst of the Annual Renewal of Life we call Spring.
Man, often as dormant in winter as a hibernating bear, moves back outside and starts to shed his winter weight. While he tends to his yard, gathers with friends and family, and enjoys the activities of the summer he turns his face toward the Sun. All of this is a part of the vast and endless Cycle of Life. Light, warmth, and renewal presuppose a time of darkness, cold and death.
The setting of the Sun and the cold dark of the night precede the bright rising of the Sun and the promise of a new day.
In the middle of this Rebirth, we have assembled, as noted elsewhere in Ritual, “… to honor the memory of those brethren whom death hath taken from us; to contemplate our own approaching dissolution; and, by the remembrance of immortality, to raise our souls above the considerations of this transitory existence.”[1]
Soong Mei-ling, better remembered as Madam Chiang Kai-Shek, taught that, “We live in the present, we dream of the future, and we learn eternal truths from the past.”
Eternal truths, gleaned from those past, have the power to lift our spirits. As I participated in the Spring Reunion, I once again found inspiration in the Degrees, and my batteries were recharged.
As we learn more about the human brain, we have discovered that human memory is not like making a documentary film. Each experience is deeply affected by our point-of-view when it is recorded. They are influenced again each time we take a memory out of storage, view it or share it.
Over time, our memories quite naturally change. Add to this the psychological need of man to rationalize his behavior, and you can easily see why, “The older I get the better I was!”
Some experiences don’t even get into memory. Jack Nicklaus notoriously refused to recall bad putts. You may feel his oft repeated claim, “I never three putt,” when he most assuredly did, was more boast than truth.
Nicklaus was, in fact, simply modeling a behavior he wanted to perfect. He had learned to block any facts that did not fit with his ideal. It made the difference between him and an average Putter.
When I line up a much needed putt, I find thousands of missed putts haunting me. All too often I melt down. That is one reason I am not chasing Tiger every weekend for a million dollar purse. My driving and my chipping are two other reasons!
How we think not only affects outcomes in our daily life but also influences our memory. When we ignore facts, and there are lots of reasons why we do, there is a gap between our memory and reality.
Unlike the Cycle of the Seasons where Winter turns to Spring when it is time, remembrance does not always, or automatically, turns into renewal.
A profound experience, exceptional example, or powerful memory may trigger a life-altering change, but even then we must act upon it. And if our mind and heart are not receptive then the remembering is just reminiscing.
There are four practices that will allow us to turn remembrance into renewal more often. Tomorrow, the First of these practices: We must faithfully and accurately record the memory.
[1] Ritual, Lodge of Sorrow
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