anamnesis

This memory stirs every year on this day. When I got home from the office on Friday, April 5, 1968 the four of us took off in our camper, a small travel trailer, for one of the campgrounds down I-95 not far south of Washington, DC in Northern Virginia. Linda's little tiny transistor radio was already tuned to her regular local station, and when we turned it on after supper, news was blaring that Martin Luther King had been shot at his motel in Memphis, Tennessee, and was dead.

The outrage was instant, the fury out of hand, as riots erupted across the nation, and rampaged for days. My office was in the Navy Annex, up Route 236, high with a view of the city across the Potomac, and when I returned to work Monday morning, the Washington skyline was ablaze, flames high, smoke billowing. A view of Hell. It's a memory I don't forget.

In all Eucharistic prayers of the Episcopal Church, there is a standard element called "the anamnesis" - - from Greek "an" which is "not" and "amnesis" "forget, out of mind" meaning that this is an event we remember, we do not forget. Our traditional Prayer I says it " having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension" while a contemporary Prayer A phrases it "Recalling his death, resurrection, and ascension, " and Prayer B "We remember his death, We proclaim his resurrection, We await his coming in glory." Wording varies, but the theology of not forgetting holds.

And the notion of anamnesis can be personalized. For example, I once ruined a hearing aid by not remembering to take it out before getting into the swimming pool. And years later with new hearing aids, remembering in the shower that I'd forgot to remove them. So I have an anamnesis:

whenever I put them into my ears, I lay a walking stick on the edge of the shower tub so I do not forget.

It gets worse. There's a dime or penny stuck in the power outlet of the Volvo (the car is ten years old, it's an old fashioned cigarette lighter) and I keep forgetting to fish it out, so

this morning several coins, dime, penny are lying on a door mat to remind me, so I don't forget to take a tweezers with me when I go down to the car. Actually, Linda came up with the idea of a bit of two-side-sticky scotch tape on my finger, which did the job with no risk of being shocked.

Not new ideas. Back in 1960 while we were stationed at the U S Naval Base in Mayport, Florida, Linda's mother treated us to the agony of the Dale Carnegie Course, several months of a weekly class session in a large gathering, to help us be at ease in speaking before other people. I remember a technique the course director offered us for remembering several topics that we wanted to include in our talk: visualize a horse going down the street carrying three cards on his back, each card noting the subject you want to make sure you do not forget. Intentionally ridiculous to make it easy to hold in mind.

Also, I do not forget my favorite of those evenings: we skipped class, went to a Jacksonville car dealer, checked out a Mercedes-Benz 180, and enjoyed driving it around for several hours.

A regret? That I didn't buy that car.

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German, I'm taking a free (so far) online German language course with a man in Germany who's been teaching German for fourteen years.

Foreign languages are a favorite (although high school Latin was not) and I've done a little in several. I took German my junior year at UnivFlorida seventy years ago and discovered a language I really loved but never pursued enough to do well. Living in Yokohama mid 1960s, enough Japanese to order a meal in a restaurant, shop in a rice shop, buy train tickets, get a taxi around Tokyo. As from seminary, enough Greek to work my way around the New Testament and the Septuagint. Learning on my own starting ten or a dozen years ago, barely enough Hebrew to work letter by letter through Old Testament verses when I need/want to.

But German. Don't remember how, but I came across this language offering. He goes back and forth with me by daily email. Really good, or at least so far confirming my own realizations as to why I've been so slow. Don't deal with words, deal in phrases. Don't get bogged down in grammar rules. Think in German, rather than thinking in English and trying to translate word by word and arrange in correct syntax. And der, die, das, he's shown some general rules for sensing which article to use with German nouns. New learning, memory, and retention are not so great at this age, but I'll see how long I stick with it. Why am I doing this? Why not?

Here I am in Time, retired with a world class outlook on life, and little or nothing else to do!

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Another FuroForty day.

RSF&PTL