Keeper

Memory. It’s the most immediate reminder that we have one foot in eternity.

We have our memories: sounds, sights, smells, emotions, moments. We don’t always choose them, but they are kept alive within until some trigger brings them out. We keep them, and they keep us.

I don’t know if, or how, animals experience memory. I have a hunch it’s a uniquely human thing, an aspect of consciousness — we are able to inhabit many times at once. We carry past, present, and future with us. We are time keepers.

I’m thinking of this because this morning while praying, a song came to mind that I haven’t thought of in years. It was a favorite of mine — is a favorite, I can attest, since I found it online and listened to it again this morning, and it undid me again. I remember listening to it over and over, thinking of my own heritage. And though I wasn’t married or even dating anyone at the time I was listening to my Geoff Moore and the Distance cassette (see how old I am), I thought of the great treasure that children would be if I ever had any of my own, and of the heritage I would want to give them.

As it happens, I now have a husband and two children, treasures beyond all reckoning. And when this song came back to me this morning it stirred me as strongly as it used to do.

I know that I was prayed for as I was growing up, and the song evokes those faithful people, some of them now dead, but still kept within. It’s a prayer in its own right too, one I’m thankful to have stumbled upon in the halls of memory once again.