He could recite hundreds of audience members’ names, addresses, and phone numbers (having only had access to the information just a short time before beginning his performance). Harry was, without a doubt, the greatest memory expert to come our way. And, uncharacteristically of many in the entertainment field, he spent the bulk of his career sharing his "secrets." He wrote several best sellers (chief among them, "How to Develop a Super Power Memory), conducted classes, ran entire schools on memory improvement.
Something I heard Harry say one night, on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, significantly impacted my life: "The main reason that most people forget a name is because they never remember it in the first place!" That was a sea-change moment for me. Being slightly dyslexic (for lack of a better word) and somewhat of a wiggle worm, I spent a significant portion of my young life a little behind and a little confused.
Lorayne's revelation was the beginning of the end of that. I bought his book and began putting to use his easy-to-apply lessons. To attempt to describe all it led to would take a great deal more time and space than this reflection allows. One place it led was to a refining of something I had always had in my life, though in very rudimentary form: I am a finder. Most of the time, when others cannot find something, I can.
You may have already come across my first two rules for finding things (First Rule: Look under something. If that doesn’t work, try the Second Rule: Stop searching, just observe.). Harry’s tip about “remember in the first place” is directly responsible for the third rule of finding things: ask yourself, "What is the obvious location?" (Or ... "Is it really lost?")
Here’s the secret: people who lose things often “lose” them in the same place. If you know them well enough, you can almost always find where they have mislaid their keys (or whatever) because they are often in the same place or places. In other words: a probable (and thus, obvious) location.
Their memory problem? They forget to remember in the first place.
And that brings us to Nicodemus. In this week’s selection from the gospel of John, one of Israel's leaders sneaks out and meets with Jesus in the night. Why at night? Jesus was not popular with the leadership. Nicodemus was being cautious; possibly hedging his bets, but it might also have been that he wanted an uninterrupted conversation with Jesus, something unlikely with the crowds circling about in the daytime. We will likely never know for certain. But we do know his purpose: like almost everyone else in that country at that time, he wants to see the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus is disturbed and confused by the things Jesus tells him. But that was not because he could not have understood them. As Jesus makes quite plain, the leaders of Israel were expected to understand such things. The problem, in my opinion: along with the other leaders of Israel, Nicodemus failed to "remember in the first place."
It's not that these things were unknowable (scripture is filled with references and explanations about the spiritual aspect of God's relationship with his people), it's just that they had stopped really trying to know them. What should have been obvious, sounded obscure. Knowable, but so forgotten that Nicodemus had no idea how to process what Jesus was saying.
They had all failed to "remember them in the first place."
We are commanded to meditate on the scriptures. This "night visitor" episode is a great illustration of why we're to do so. The more time we spend reading and meditating on scripture, the more we are going to be able to understand what we read there. We have to be intentional about it, though.
We have to make the effort to "remember it in the first place."
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PHOTO: Steve Orr
Brief article on memory that I found interesting: https://andrewpegoda.com/2018/03/03/modern-life-and-the-problem-of-memory/
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A somewhat different version of this reflection appeared in March 2014.
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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Trinity Sunday (May 27, 2018)
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu//
Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17
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I hope you can join us Friday morning for Lectionary Breakfast. As usual, we will gather at 8:00 at the Waco "Egg and I" for food, fellowship, and a time of Bible discussion.
Extra points to anyone who remembers everyone's name!
Enjoy the week!
Steve
