Memory and Symbol

Genesis 9:16 "Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."

I was visiting my brother and his wife last week for a change of scenery after my cat died.  The Green Mountain State of Vermont lives up to its name, and it was a peaceful time of not doing much of anything.  Then, on my last night there, I woke up to sounds of activity about 3:30 am.  By about 4 am I could hear my sister-in-law on the phone with someone, concern in her voice.  I got up in a panic.
 

The issue at hand was that their dog was having a bad allergic reaction to something and they quickly got him to an ER where a shot of Benedryl and Prednisone took care of him in short order.  But the effect of waking up to that emergency kept its potency for me, long after the particular crisis was successfully resolved.  Of course, having lost two pets unexpectedly myself in the last year, there was my true concern for their dog, who is a sweetheart.  But what the circumstance did was to instantly transport me back thirty years. 
 

Suddenly, it was again midnight on Nov. 1, 1980, when I woke to the sound of my mother's desperate call for an ambulance, and the subsequent confirmation of my father's death of a heart attack at a mere 47 years old.  The similar occurrence of waking in the night to someone on the phone with emergency services not only made me concerned in the moment, it played the tape of my emotions the night my father died.
 

This psychological trick happens to us all the time.  Certainly it happens with traumatic events and in its most extreme form can have the devastating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition suffered by so many war veterans.  But as I thought about it, the phenomenon is just as likely to occur with happy occasions.  The smell of lilacs brings me back to the home where I grew up and the happy memories out in our lilac-filled yard.  Eating lasagna reminds me of overnights at the home of my best friend, whose mother made a lasagna like nobody's business.
 

Our memory is filled not only with the specific event, but with all the trappings surrounding it--the location, the smells, the sounds, the colors, the people.  In churches, this underlies much of both the joy and the conflict people experience.  Objecting to the praise band instead of the organ can have its roots in musical taste, but it can also have its roots in the memory of church services past with people and in places that were beloved.  A person in priestly vestments might bring up memories of the person who saved you or the person who molested you.  A hymn sung at your husband's funeral will have more power when it is sung on a Sunday morning because of that association.
 

All of that is why rituals and symbols have such power, and why that power grows in strength as we age, enriching the symbols with each new experience of their use.  "Do this in remembrance of me."  "I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." "Our Father, which art in heaven." The steeple, the bread, the water, the wine.  The power is not in the symbols or words themselves, but in the memory of interactions with the people associated with them.
 

To the extent that we proclaim ourselves to be Christians, our interactions with others will determine the definition of "Christian" for them and thus how they react to others who call themselves by that name.  As I have discussed at length in God With Skin On: Finding God's Love in Human Relationships, we teach each other what God is like through our behavior, and that memory can either taint or enrich the faith we represent and the symbols that go along with it.
 

What are your memories of faith, for good or for ill?  What symbols or people or events take you back there?  How can you help to shape positive faith experiences for a new generation?