Document Actions
Pooled Memory, The Presence of the Past and our Guests this Sunday
Scientist Rupert Sheldrake suggests biology is not simply a collection of mechanical parts, but is a transmitter of pooled memory spanning generations; we are not simply a collection of genetic material, but participants in a 'morphic field' of memory.
Using Sheldrake's theories, one writer suggests we not think of our lives as an individual block attached to the block of the generation before us, but think of our individual lives more like collapsing telescopes with one generation overlapping another. The past is not something we simply know about, it is present and active in us. Our DNA not only passes on eye color, it passes on the collective memory, the collective story, of those through whom we are birthed.
It is not unlike what we believe takes place when we recall the story of salvation history in the Easter Vigil, when we participate in the Eucharist and other liturgical recollections of the Scriptures: we are not simply hearing these texts, we are somehow effectively participating in the story of those texts with the persons from the texts. We are passing with Israel through Red Sea as we recount their story. We are effectively being broken and dispersed in the action of the Eucharist.
Dain Perry is a descendant of the DeWolf family of Rhode Island, believed to be one of America's largest slave trading families. Constance Perry is a descendant of slaves brought through Charleston who resided in North Carolina. Their journey encompasses our American journey with slavery and race.
Dain and other members of his family traced their family's history of slave trading following a geographical course from Rhode Island to Africa and Cuba. It was a story not officially passed on by the family, yet one that emerged in the collective conscious of later generations.
Constance was raised in Boston and until recent years did not wish to connect with the story of her ancestors in North Carolina thinking it had memories and realities she did not wish to engage. She is also reconnecting to stories that have been passed on more deeply than she knew.
Please join us as we welcome Dain as our guest preacher at 9:00 and 11:15 this Sunday, and as we welcome Constance and Dain to our Adult Forum at 10:10.
As we get closer to Holy Week, we are reminded once again that the recalling of story, rather than binding us to that story, can serve as that which frees us to live in this present moment.
Peace,
Todd Donatelli