Remembering That We Forget

By Dan Allender

Copyright © 1995 Mars Hill Review 2 May 1995 · Issue No. 2: pgs 7-19.

We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget. —G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith{1}

John Brenneman, a friend who is a Swedish missionary, accompanied me on the drive from Gothenburg to Vaxjo as I prepared for my first sexual abuse seminar in Sweden. We had arrived in Sweden several days before to adjust to jet lag and finally were en route to fulfill the purpose of our trip. The seminar involves three days of lectures and the observation of videotapes that illustrate with a real client the principles addressed in the lecture material. An hour outside of Vaxjo, John said, "When we arrive, give me the videotapes and I'll make sure the equipment is working." I looked at him in utter confusion. I didn't have the videotapes; I thought they had been mailed to him months prior to my arrival. I thought John was pulling a nasty but comical ruse wanting to see me sweat, as indeed I was. I stammered, "Nice try, John. You have the transcripts of the tapes and the tapes." He looked at me with no humor in his eyes and said, "I have the transcripts, but you never sent the tapes."

I felt a sudden, awful rush of memory. It was as if someone had begun flashing slides of photographs in rapid-fire progression on a screen before me. Unlike photos, however, the memories were not distinct and clear, but blurred and haphazard. I recalled walking out of my office to leave for Sweden, gazing at the videotapes on my bookshelf, and remarking to myself, "I'm so glad I don't have to carry them overseas." Then I recalled sitting with my personal assistant, Susan, a week before leaving and hearing her say, "Be sure you take your copy of the videos." These two events and countless others stood in accusation of my forgetfulness. And I felt the awful force of a moment when I "remembered that I forgot."

It can happen in the middle of a tennis stroke: "I forgot to add the Chicago trip to my monthly expense request." It might happen in the middle of a conversation: "Oh no--I forgot to pick up the kids." In one awful instant we "remember that we forget" and we feel the disruption, the irritation, or in my case, the awful shame of facing our situation with new eyes.

This sudden intrusion of what has been forgotten is disconcerting on two levels: 1) the fact of what has been forgotten requires a sudden response, and 2) the fact that it has been forgotten unnerves our confidence and our sense of balance in navigating our world. To suddenly remember that we forgot requires new activity that breaks our stride and compels a change in direction. On the drive to Vaxjo, I was horrified at the prospect of ruining the seminar by not having brought the tapes. Within moments of my discovery, I began to assess what I could do to rectify the problem. But then a more disconcerting reality pushed its way into my mind: "How could you forget something so basic, so important, so obvious?" What I had forgotten disturbed me greatly; that I had forgotten disturbed me much more.

Everyday we forget. We forget details, appointments, and keys, but all these pale in comparison to the amnesia of self in which we forget who we are. A person can live merely by habit when to others it looks like design; a life can be lost to compliance, fear, and comfort when it appears to be a valued and necessary existence. In the quote preceding this essay, Chesterton is not arguing that we "find" ourselves; on the contrary, he seems to suggest that this is the most fruitless of all quests. Rather, he is suggesting that spirit, ecstasy, and art reveal that we cannot fully escape the awareness that life is more, and that we are more than we appear to be. It should be no surprise that we forget; it should be a marvel that we remember at all.

But occasionally we do remember--we see with eyes that finally "pull together" the disparate parts of life into a unity that overcomes chaos and provides a path to move toward who we are to become. How does that occur? How do we see the "patterns," the "themes" of our life when apparently we are so dull-witted, or worse, blank and forgetful? Obviously, a simple answer does not exist, but to borrow from Chesterton it is spirit, ecstasy, and art that pierce our amnesia and point us to who we are and to what is beyond. In this article, I wish to consider the nature of forgetfulness only to provide a context for understanding how we can storm it in order to reclaim the treasures of memory for our life's journey.

We will consider the nature of forgetfulness in light of these questions: 1) What is memory? 2) Who (why and how) do we forget? 3) How are we called to recall--to recollect--the past?

What Is Memory?

For some, memory is a warm glow of nostalgia that soothes the heart; for others it is a dark, cold room full of plaintive horror--a space never to be entered. On one level, memory is a mystery--a complex process involving morphological changes in neuronic structure, biochemical changes, and other physiological processes. This biological aspect of the brain has too often been ignored as either irrelevant or in opposition to Christian reflection. Yet it is a lens of reality that we ignore to our detriment. Recent neurobiological research compels us to reconsider how we view memory.

For centuries the mind in general and memory in particular have been conceptualized according to evolving metaphors. Steven Rose points out that through the last several centuries scientists have compared the mind to the advanced technology of their particular age.{2} In Descartes' day, the mind was viewed in light of hydraulics and clocks. In the early twentieth century, the mind was compared to a telephone exchange system. More recently the dominant metaphor has been a computer; the brain is the hardware and life experience is the software.

If this metaphor is accurate, then memory may be thought of as the storehouse of the past. A data bit, like an event, can be retrieved if we know the right folder or name under which it is stored. Data is recorded--that is perceived and subsequently organized into some category--and then stored under that structure and retrieved for use when needed.

This computer metaphor fits easily with our view of the mind as a videotape or a series of photo albums. We know that a picture of our high school sweetheart is stored in some file in our memory and we "re-call" it to mind. Or, we may see her picture and forget her name, but we can "re-collect" the context--other friends' names, our last date--and in the midst of this network of information we may suddenly recall her name.

This view of memory holds that the past is stored intact in, accurate and neutral form and is likely to be found in one or several places in the brain. Such a view is derived from a Cartesian perspective which uses inert, inanimate mechanisms as paradigms for assessing living organisms. The result is an analysis that does not take into account the radical disposition of the mind. Indeed, neuroscience demands a radical shift in our understanding of the brain/mind dynamic as it influences memory.

Current Understanding of the Process of Memory

Memory is a dynamic and selective process and not merely a matter of storing and retrieving neutral data.

In the early years of brain research, it was presumed that the brain recorded data the way a photograph does. What was stored was an imprint of what was perceived; therefore, what was retrieved was an accurate representation of what had occurred. Yet the truth is that bias not only influences how we perceive something but it even influences how we retrieve it.

Storage is not neutral, because we store information on the basis of meaning. Studies have been conducted comparing a person's ability to memorize randomly presented words with words that are allowed to be recalled in an order or structure. Obviously, our recall is more effective when there is order. But when ingoing data is given personal meaning and provokes emotion, then the material is recalled even more effectively. {3}

Retrieval is also "meaning" driven. The day after the space shuttle Challenger exploded, Ulric Neisser, a memory researcher, told his students to write down where they were and what they were doing when they first heard of the tragedy. Three years later, Neisser asked the students to answer the same question. One-third of them gave answers that were so far off from their original account as to be utterly unrelated to the facts they had recorded within 24 hours of the explosion. When shown their original accounts, many refused to believe their current memory was inaccurate.{4}

Memory is not a record; it is rather a reconstruction of what occurred--and is influenced by selective attention, bias, guesswork, and imagination. Thus memory is not so much like a photograph as it is like an impressionistic painting. For example, Van Gogh's trees may blaze up into the sky like an inferno, but they are unmistakably trees. And in the vast majority of our memories, they are indeed trees--but they are embroiled with the themes and passions of our present as much as they are a replica of something from our past. It is a construction shaped as much or more by our present subjective demands than merely by what occurred.

Magdala Arnold, a pioneer in memory research, writes:

Memory is not an isolated process. It depends on perception, is influenced by emotion and imagination and embedded in the whole sequence from perception to action. Without memory, there can be no perception as we experience it, no learning, no motivated action... {5}

In short, memory is selective, meaning-driven, and subjective. The importance of Arnold's findings is that memory is no longer presumed to be separate from imagination. My past is story, in fact, to some degree unknown and hidden. It is no better known in fact, than the keys used to unlock it--"keys" being the categories we use to bring order and meaning to the countless, apparently random events of our past.

I cannot recall what I ate for dinner last night, but I do remember the shimmer of the sun on the brown, shoulder-length hair of the girl who stood in front of me at recess in fourth grade. I cannot recall much about my doctoral graduation ceremony, but I can tell you what I had for dinner the night of the ninth-grade football honors banquet. Why? I don't know. Or do I? I suspect there are many factors embedded in what I recall that provide hints as to how I see, shape, and move into my future.

Memory is a seldom entered gallery of selectively chosen paintings that provides structure, meaning, and energy to live in the present and to create the future.

Who (How and Why) Do We Forget?

"Forget me not" is the plaintive cry of many a lover. To be forgotten is to have our name erased--our existence not only called into question but possibly brought to nothing. Yet, the ability to forget is as important as our ability to remember. If we were compelled to remember every detail, number, facial expression, word, meaning--of our every interaction we would soon run out of mental capacity. Far worse, we would overdose on the glut of reality that we would continually be forced to ingest. The novelist Jorge Luis Borges paints the horror of a life that cannot forget. He writes of a character named Funes:

We in a glance perceive three wine glasses on the table; Funes saw all the shoots, clusters and grapes on the vine. He remembered the shapes of clouds in the south at dawn on the 30th of April of 1882, and he could compare them in his recollection with the marbled grain in the design of a leather-bound book which he had seen only once, and with the lines in the spray which an oar raised in the Rio Negro on the eve of the battle of the Quebracho...These recollections were not simple; each visual image was linked to muscular sensations, thermal sensations, etc. He could reconstruct all his dreams, all his fancies. Two or three times he had constructed an entire day. He told me: "I have more memories in myself alone than all men have had since the world was a world....My memory, sir, is like a garbage disposal..."{6}

It should come as no surprise to us that Funes dies young.

What ought to trouble us is not that we forget. This is actually an ability that it is necessary for our survival. We will call this "ordinary forgetfulness." Nor, ultimately, is the issue for us why we remember certain things and forget others, though this is important and should be addressed eventually. We will call this "personal forgetfulness."

What ought to haunt us is the question, why do we forget God? And when we do "recall" him, why is it often at the loss of our memory, the loss of our story? You see, in forgetting God, we forget ourselves. We may wonder why we forget a phone number, or memories of past abuse, or the moment we walked down the aisle after we were married; but to adequately address any of these concerns we must begin by approaching the issue of forgetfulness from the perspective of the Bible.

In Old Testament places the idea of "forgetfulness" plays a central role in determining destiny, whether of a person or of a community. I will address the issue from the book of Deuteronomy. I choose this book because it portrays what an ideal Israel would be. It presents an Israel with "one God, one people, one land, one sanctuary, and one law." {7} It is also the Old Testament book most quoted in the New Testament, and therefore its message is central to understanding the perspective of the New Testament writings. Listen to the words of Moses:

4:9 Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

4:23 Be careful not to forget the covenant of the LORD your God that he made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the LORD your God has forbidden.

8:14 Then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

8:19 If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed.

Forgetfulness is no small phenomenon as these passages treat it. It is at the heart of disobedience, idolatry, pride, and destruction. What are we to make of Moses' words here?

"To forget" in these passages does not indicate ordinary forgetfulness, in which matters are necessarily blotted out of memory. Nor does it indicate the personal forgetfulness that so often intrigues us as "selective memory." No, the forgetfulness raised by Moses to Israel here is a raw, pernicious, and intentional flight from what is true. I would call it "existential forgetfulness." It is a suppressing of memory in order to avoid God's call to keep him central in our daily operations and life's passions.

There are many forms of existential forgetfulness, but a common one is our flight from experience which questions God's goodness. I once spoke to a man whose wife had left him for another man. This man was serene, confident his wife would come to her senses and return to their marriage.

At one point, I asked how he could be so sure. He answered, "God would not let me suffer this way unless he wanted me to become a better husband for this woman. I know he will bring her back." His confidence was not in a sovereign God; it was in how he believed God would work out this tragedy in his life. Simply put, he had made God into his own image. His "construction" of God was an idol that he worshiped more than the God of the Scriptures who gave him no such assurance.

This man could not bear to believe in a God who would allow his heart to be shattered. He would only believe in a God who heals (according to this man's vision). It might appear that he had not forgotten God but instead had only misperceived him. Yet, in fact, his passionate refusal to bow to the true God was a forgetting of God that allowed for a god who would bow to his vision of life.

How We Forget: Purposeful Suppression

Existential forgetfulness is a suppressing of memory that turns from what is true to focus on a more appealing, and less demanding reality. In many ways, this is not unlike hiding one's car keys, then not only forgetting where the keys are hidden, but forgetting that one forgot. Given how often we need and use our car keys it is likely that sooner or later we will say: "Wait, I'm missing my keys. Where did I put them?" Then we naturally would remember that we hid the keys and begin the process of sorting through all the places we might have stashed them. On the other hand, it is inconceivable that we would go for days or months "forgetting we forgot" and thus forgetting the necessity of finding our keys. Yet such is true of the kind of pernicious forgetfulness we use to suppress our memory of God: we hide God, then we forget where we put him, and then we forget that we forgot.

The apostle Paul writes:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. (Romans 1:18-23)

Suppression of the truth of God is the ultimate insanity. God is clear, obvious, and unrelenting in making known his presence. He is about us externally, or objectively, in the order, beauty, and glory of creation. Yet Paul says there is also an internal witness of the law that bears testimony against the deeds of humankind (Romans 2:15). So there are both objective markers for memory and internal, subjective stimuli as well.

Suppression is in simple terms, hiding. It takes truth and pushes it under the water so that it can no longer be seen in its simple, direct witness. This is an active, conscious refusal to be humbled by the weight of God's glory. One ought to look at a sunrise and be aware that an infinite and merciful being has painted our existence with order, wonder, beauty. Then it ought to further dawn on us that we are his art, created for his glory. Such an awareness ought to simultaneously humble us and enlarge our sense of gratitude. But suppression refuses to see; it refuses to draw humbling and enlarging connections between the sunrise and our calling to give glory to God. As such, suppression is a dulling of desire, imagination, and passion.

But how can suppression work when God is so about us? What enables us to forget is that our attention is turned to an idol--that is, the work of our own hands. Idolatry is not the by-product of forgetting God; it is the means by which we forget him.

Reconsider the story of the exodus and the events that followed: the people of God were miraculously saved from a holocaust. Pharaoh's forces were destroyed when the divided waters restrained by God's hand were released at the most opportune moment. Yet this dramatic, indeed, unforgettable scene, was lost to Israel's memory as just days later the people of God, led by Aaron, danced in a trance before the golden calf.

Their heart was claimed by music, dance, song, drink, and an art produced by their own imagination, rather than by God's redemptive act. How could this be?

Let me answer simply: All existential forgetfulness begins with suppression, builds on the energy of idolatry, and binds us to an illusion that both numbs the heart to what is missing and blinds us even to our forgetfulness. Recall the nature of memory: it is not so much a register of what occurred as much as it is a framing of themes that we consider to be essential explanations for who we are and why we do what we do. In other words, it is possible to remember something that is not true and reframe it into a scene that actually occurred. If such an amalgamation--with new details, sequences, and motives--is unchecked by other reality factors, then what we recall will be in fact a new scene. It will be "remembered" as true, in fact, more true than events that actually occurred.

Memory, like every other dimension of our soul, is employed in the service of either our corrupt or our redeemed motivation. Indeed, memory--and, perhaps more so, the consequence of remembering--is a litmus test of our heart's direction either for pursuit of God or for suppressing God from our field of vision.

Why We Forget--A Hatred of Glory

Why would anyone forget God? The writer of Deuteronomy suggests that pride is the key to comprehending why we forget the one who is unforgettable (8:14). Yet is the matter as simple as this one word? It is both simple and wildly complex. Pride is a word that implies we wish to see ourselves as self-sufficient, needing no one and nothing outside of ourselves for our existence. We forget God because to remember him is to be stripped of our presumption of independence, control, and self-centeredness.

But we are caught on the horns of a terrible dilemma: We are made for God, and, so to forget him is to forget ourselves. And in forgetting ourselves we become nothing. To become who we are, on the other hand, demands that we live in awe of and gratitude for the glory of God. Thus the bind is simple: to be human, we must bow to his glory; and not to bow is inhuman and ends in our destruction

Either we bow and destroy our pride, or we refuse to bow and destroy our humanity.

The only way to escape this dilemma is to forget--to live without memory. Often this means living an ordinary, unassuming, habitual, regulated life that desires no more than survival and a few earthly pleasures along the way. The more numb we become, the easier it is to forget. And the fewer questions we ask, the more comfortable we become with the presumption that this is all there is and ever will be.

Once we lose memory, we lose hope not for what is now, but for what we sense must come to pass. Put another way, once we lose (or radically diminish) the ability to remember, we lose (or radically impede) the ability to imagine. And if memory is imagination regarding themes of the past, then creativity is imagination that uses the past to create the future. Chesterton knew that art was a witness against our tendency to forget, that is to live without a vision of glory. One of the powers of spirit, art and ecstasy is their transcendence of ordinary experience and their beckoning us to see our existence through eyes that long for beauty and glory.{8}

Why would we hate this and work to suppress glory by being numb to memory? Consider the passion, the depth of desire, that is aroused by beauty. C.S. Lewis writes:

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words--to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. {9}

To enter beauty (rather than to suppress truth) is to be humbled by our desire to bathe in, join, and become a part of what can be satisfied only by God's glory revealed in heaven. Yet we distance ourselves from this inconsolable desire and instead seek rest in a god that does not require us to wait for glory.

A loss of memory is in essence a loss of soul not only for the past but for the future as well. And a loss of the past and the future compels a person to live (unnaturally) in and for the present alone. It forces the soul to find all of life in the moment rather than to find wisdom in the past and hope in the future. This not only fuels idolatry but turns our idolatry into a compulsive, repetitive obsession that today we call an addiction.

Can any human being live with a loss of soul--a loss of his or her very essence? I believe not. Every human will eventually find some means to approximate the life intended to be found only in the wonder and praise of God's glory. But note carefully: such a pursuit will end in a counterfeit worship of the creature rather than the creator. It will be found in a wonder and awe in oneself.

To glorify oneself, one must rewrite history--that is, distort the past and reshape one's memory to fit the themes of self-glorification. One must forget that the impetus to start a worthy endeavor came from the development of a burden birthed in us by our engagement with others.

Indeed, memory that is in the service of self will seldom recall moments of indebtedness or recall the thrill of admiration. And both of these acts are necessarily humbling: to remember with gratitude is to acknowledge neediness; and to remember another with awe and admiration is to acknowledge incompleteness. Both are preconditions for breaking the back of idolatrous forgetfulness of God. And both reveal that our glory is not enough, that a greater glory exists which we know little of but are meant to embrace.

How Do We Remember?

It is one thing to be aware that we have lost our keys; this requires being conformed to a reality that impinges with concrete clarity. I know with utmost urgency no matter how hard I try, I cannot start the car without my keys.

But to remember that we forgot requires being drawn to an awareness that I have lost myself. I am not yet found--at least not fully discovered as I am meant to be in the tapestry of God's glory. I don't know yet whether I should pour myself into writing or into being a better therapist--or how about simply being a better father? What am I to be? to do? to believe? to doubt? to love? to hate? to live?

It is art that may provoke me to remember. I read Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev, and I am pierced by the price of giftedness. He writes about the cost of being gifted. I groan with the realization that any gift puts a person in the odd position of being separated from, cut off by the very ones--the community--that gift is meant to serve. I come face-to-face with the hatred, jealousy, and torment that are returned to those who possess the charisma of God's endowment. I remember why I despise my gifts. I recall the jealousy of my best friend in seventh grade when I made the football team and he did not. I don't want to face alienation again. But God calls us to remember him with our gifts. Reading Potok I am drawn to face God and use my gifts for his purpose in spite of the cost.

I look into the eyes of the lovers in Chagall's painting "Equestrienne" and I know the passion I have for my wife is a gift, a charisma, which I can humbly enjoy and grow in or turn from in fear and trembling. I see more clearly what we could enter more deeply still; there is music, mystery, and a playfulness that these lovers invite me to taste. Then my thoughts are stilled by the thought of my God, the most gifted of all. He bears a hatred from his creation unlike any artist, poet, or writer. He knows the passion of connection with his brothers and sisters. His eyes burn with greater intensity than any two lovers sitting astride a violin-playing horse. What must he be like?

If art provokes me to remember, then it is community that arouses me to not forget. I cannot read Potok alone nor gaze at Chagall's labor in isolation. I need a brother, a sister, a friend to walk with me through the gallery. He will see in the form, the words, what I cannot see because I am blind and apt to suppress. She will hear sounds that I am deaf to and call me to recognize the noise that dulls my ears to the quiet trills of God. A community encourages me to remember God as I wait for him to reveal his glory.

Memory and Art

Memory is a taste of glory that begins with spirit, ecstasy, and art but ultimately draws us to a realm that is full of mystery. To remember that I forgot is to approach all of life--including my past--with the awareness that all I see (know, remember, imagine) is but a pale indicator of a God who is alluring me to himself.

If this is true, then how am I to view my past? How am I to ponder with my memories? Let me begin to answer by considering my earliest memories. I recall sitting at the scene of an accident where my mother and father were thrown from a car and were driven away in an ambulance. There are many, many details about this scene that I have "recalled"--but they are probably the machination of an older child who refuses to leave such a scene in stark, unadorned horror. Perhaps the details are true; but more than likely they are the result of guesswork and imagination.

When I consider the event, I usually get lost in the details or am surprised by the lack of detail regarding certain moments of the event. Moreover, it is rare for me to recall those events and as a tragedy that God used to set the stage for even greater tragedies, which in turn were used to create a hunger in me that eventually dawned in the gospel's beckoning me to peer into another world.

It is rare for me to recall that accident and be guided by the themes of gratitude and awe. And yet it was the accident and all that transpired in odd succession that shaped my character, set the dimensions of my unique struggles, and set me before the person who eventually told me about Jesus. My life is a story--a piece of art that ought to surprise, infuriate, intrigue, confuse, humor, arouse, and comfort me once I see it in light of glory.

All memory is story--and all story is the stage where God whispers to us to remember that we forgot. In this sense, all art is narrative that reveals a glimpse of beauty, a taste of glory. And it is the glory of God that most deeply pierces our pride. This glory is seen most dearly in the natural beauty of our world and in the relational beauty that is tasted in the rare moments of intimacy and harmony between persons.

A glimpse of beauty births the awful instant when we remember that we forgot. Beauty is the medium that takes nature, human relationship, and sensuality and translates it all to the realm of the supernatural. Without beauty--both objective and subjective-- there would be no hint of God in a world that is marred by the blemish of decay, hatred, and ugliness. Beauty humbles us; it displaces us at the center of our story. And when we are no longer at the center--even of our own memories--then we are awakened to remember the themes of our past, the moments of our history, that point to the glory of his story being intertwined in our story. Then we remember not only that we forgot, but that we are a piece of his handiwork.


{1}G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith (1990) NY: Doubleday (p. 54).

{2}Steven Rose, The Making of Memory (1992) NY: Doubleday.

{3} E.B. Bolles, Remembering and Forgetting (1988) NY: Walker and Company (p. 66-72).

{4} See "A Case of Misplaced Nostalgia," by U. Neisser, in American Psychologist (January 1991); and "Phantom Flashbulbs: False Recollections of Hearing the News About Challenger," by U. Neisser and N. Harsch in E. Winograd and U. Neisser (eds.), Affect and Accuracy in Recall: Studies of "Flashbulb" Memories (Cambridge University Press, 1992).

{5} M. Arnold, Memory and the Brain (1984) Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (p. vii.).

{6} J.L. Borges, "Funes the Memorious," in Fictions (Calder, 1965).

{7} R.B. Dillard, Tremper Longman III, An Introduction to the Old Testament (1994) Grand Rapids: Zondervan (p. 102).

{8} See Don Hudson's article in this Mars Hill Review for a perspective on how art draws the heart to the realm of mystery and hope.

{9} Clyde Kilby, (ed.) An Anthology of C.S. Lewis: A Mind Awake (1980) NY: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, Publishers (p. 182).