Cellular Memory and the Lord's Supper (by Kim Thoday) Dr. Paul Pearsall, a psycho-neuro-immunologist (try saying that with a mouth full of marbles!) has written a book entitled The Heart's Code. Pearsall postulates a relatively new scientific theory. He maintains that although the heart's physiological function is to pump blood through our lungs and then that oxygen-rich blood throughout our body, it also has a significant role to play in the deeper realm of one's memory. To that extent, he believes the heart has the capacity to love and to feel other emotions. Furthermore, he extrapolates that the heart stores information, shares energy throughout the body, and even communicates with other hearts. Pearsall offers some persuasive research and anecdotal evidence of heart patients for his thesis. Central to his thesis is the idea of "cellular memory" - that is, that our bodies' cells contain an in-built mechanism to codify and store significant memories of our lives. It is interesting to consider that in poetry, art and religion, from time immemorial to the present, the human heart has often been portrayed as that place where the most profound of human emotions are felt. In everyday language we use many metaphorical expressions about the heart: heartache, heart of the matter, heartfelt, broken heart, bleeding heart, heart of darkness, heartening, disheartened, lonely heart, hearty, sweet heart, take heart, and so on. Dr. Pearsall tells of a conversation he had with a psychiatrist who told him about an eight year old girl who had received a heart transplant from a ten year old girl who had been murdered. The eight year old girl's mother sought psychological help for her daughter when she began to wake up screaming because of dreams she was having about the person who murdered her heart donor. After some time the little girl was able to recall certain details about the murderer, the place and time of the murder and the weapon used. This young heart transplant recipient was eventually able to assist police find the person who was indeed found to be guilty of the crime. Two thousand years ago, before Jesus of Nazareth was to be tried and executed upon a Roman cross of execution, he met in an upper room with his disciples. As they shared in the traditional Jewish Passover meal, Jesus introduced a special moment into the ancient ritual. He took a loaf of bread, broke it, gave thanks to God and told his disciples to do this in memory of him. Likewise after the meal he took a cup of wine and told the disciples that this cup meant the new testament in his blood and to do this as often as they got together to celebrate this meal in memory of him. We know that these disciples did as he commanded because this great tradition has been faithfully handed on down to the present day. Amongst the earliest post-Easter communities of faith this meal of memory (the Lord's supper) was observed and to this day it remains pivotal to Christian community. In a sense when we share in the Lord's Supper, (also known as the Eucharist or Holy Communion), we participate in a "cellular memory." We participate in the heart of the Christian faith. Cellular memory is a useful idea to reflect theologically upon the heart of our faith in Jesus Christ. Memory is itself a foundational element of human being. We rely upon the brain's ability to recall for everyday activities. Without memory we would be little more than animals that mainly rely upon instinct. As we learn to do things from simple tasks to solving the complex problems of life, this information is stored in our memory. To use a cyber metaphor, our memory at this level, functions as RAM (random access memory), where information can be instantly recalled, so that the myriad regular tasks and routines of daily life require minimal mental effort and the process of thought to action is one of efficiency. In other words, our memory functions like a template. If it did not, we would have to continually relearn how to do something every time. But memory is not just a utility. Memory is something that goes beyond rational explanation. Memory is also mysterious and deeply spiritual. Memory is like space-time, it is fluid - some things we find easy to remember, others not. Memory changes over the stages of life. Later in life certain memories of earliest childhood return and other memories we lose. Some things we remember in detail while other memories are somehow concertinaed into impressions and blurred thoughts. There are certain memories we carry for all our lives. Others are momentary and fleeting. Memories are combinations of thoughts and feelings. Memories can be quite abstract and others transport us back to some significant time and place, sometimes overwhelmingly so, where we almost relive the event or the feeling. Memory also stores our identity - who we are, how we perceive ourselves, what we believe, how we feel about most things. When a person loses their memory through accident, illness or malfunction, it is devastating because he or she partially or totally loses their identity. Pearsall's thesis is a powerful reminder of that which we know to be true from the Scriptures and from experience and that is that the greatest of human emotions and memories, the most traumatic and the most joyful or sublime memories are somehow directly connected to the heart. The theory of cellular memory of course takes in more than the heart and suggests that memory may also be stored in other bodily organs. After all, why do we remember some people as a pain in the neck? Sometimes when we feel the most acute emotional pain we feel it literally in the area of our heart. My memories of falling in love with the woman who would become my partner for life are indeed partly those euphoric feelings of the heart. The most sublime religious feelings and thoughts too are often described and experienced in connection with one's heart. Here are some examples just from the sacred text of the Gospel of Matthew: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8). For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Matt 6:21). For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Matt 12: 34). This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me (Matt 15:8) He [Jesus] said to them, "For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so" (Matt 19:8). And he [Jesus] said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matt 22:37). In fact there are one hundred verses in the New Testament alone that present important aspects of the Gospel message with reference to the human heart. Most of these references, as indeed with the one's listed above, are concerned with ethics and the heart being that part of a person that exposes their true identity or nature. For instance, take Matthew 6:21. Here Jesus challenges us to engage in a reality check. What Jesus is saying to us is: Hey you may think you are a Christian, you may speak the Christian-ese, you may go to Church each Sunday and do the Christian jive, but how big is your personal bank account? For it is what we actually place our time, energy and security in, that is the litmus test for which God we have chosen to worship. What is interesting for our purpose is that the question of allegiance is a question of the heart. The text assumes that it is ultimately one's heart where human allegiances lie. When we gather together to celebrate the Lord's supper, we remember Jesus. In remembering Jesus we remember his identity. The remembered past becomes present, and when that happens we are transformed. In remembering Jesus we reconnect with our identity as Christians. Our identity is connected to his identity. Our hearts are connected to his heart. We recall what he lived for and died for. We remember his teachings, his life, his ministry, his Death and his Resurrection. It is a holistic memory - a cellular memory - we are called to have about Jesus. We don't just worship Jesus' mind, or his ideas, or the things he did. We remember his bodily life and the heart of his life. We remember that Jesus is the Son of God, but we remember how this was demonstrated in the remembered stories of the Christian tradition. We remember how he loved individuals and groups. We remember his trials and temptations. We remember how he treated people. We remember his enormous capacity to love the unloved and those who were seen as the enemy. We remember whom he got angry with and what he got angry about. The Lord's supper - the breaking and eating of the bread and the drinking together of the wine - points us toward a cellular memory. We remember his humanity as well as his divinity. And we remember that he demonstrated his divinity (the nature and purposes of God) through the affirmation of humanity (the total event of his humanity; his own humanity and his interaction with humanity and the natural world). In the remembered enactment of the Lord's Supper we are given opportunity for our identity to mix with Jesus' identity, our life blood to mingle with his life blood, our hearts to be in communion with his heart. Blessings in Jesus' memory, KIM THODAY, Hewett Community Church of Christ, South Australia
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