Roger Ebert and Prophetic Memory
Click here to read a delicious post by Roger Ebert about the loss of his ability to eat or drink. Read the whole thing. If you like it, come back.
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Ebert’s memory – catalyzed by a Cormac McCarthy novel – has gone into overdrive in the absence of his eating faculties. Serving him far more than mere tantalizing reminders of his current deprivations, his memories actually nourish him from the past:
I don’t drink beer, but the frosted mug evoked for me a long-buried memory of my father and I driving in his old Plymouth to the A&W Root Beer stand (gravel driveways, carhop service, window trays) and his voice saying “…and a five-cent beer for the boy.” The smoke from his Lucky Strike in the car. The heavy summer heat.
For nights I would wake up already focused on that small but heavy glass mug with the ice sliding from it, and the first sip of root beer. I took that sip over and over. The ice slid down across my fingers again and again. But never again.
These evocative snapshots of the past succor him during present trials. So much so that one gets the sense he prefers the quality of life these amplified memories provide. These are new experiences, not cheap facsimiles of old ones. Interestingly, some friends visiting him in the hospital interpret this as a work of God:
“Could be, when the Lord took away your drinking, he gave you back that memory.”
Whether my higher power was the Lord or Cormac McCarthy, those were the words I needed to hear. And from that time I began to replace what I had lost with what I remembered.
Of course, it was both the Lord and Cormac McCarthy. Through the prophetic passages of scripture we imbibe of the prophetic memory, traveling beyond our dystopian wilderness and into the paradise of the Lord (good literature can do the same to a lesser degree). Consider how Isaiah serves up prophetic memories of the future in much the same way Cormac McCarthy and Roger Ebert dine on the past:
He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. (from Isaiah 2)
And again:
Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands. (from Isaiah 65)
For those whose prophetic memories have been amplified by faith, these experiences of the future sustain like no food can. But for the beloved community of God, they’re more than memories, for we inhabit them together when we feast at the table of fellowship, and Ebert stumbles upon it’s earthly parallel:
What I miss is the society. Lunch and dinner are the two occasions when we most easily meet with friends and family. They’re the first way we experience places far from home.
The beloved community is where we taste the promises of prophecy tangibly. It is where we chop and cook, poach and roast and savor the meal of the kingdom come – quite literally, here and now, in plain public view. It is where, and when, and how a people of the future, presently deprived of their total faculties, “experience places far from home.”
This reminds me of why I'm fascinated with wine as what Christ chose as the symbol for his new covenant. Prophetic memory is like evocation.
I was at a monastery in Northern California that operates a winery. The fellow who led me on a tasting of their wines spoke about how different people taste the same wine differently. Some can taste the oakiness, or hints of cherry, or whatever that particular wine happens to be. But it's not a science. One person swore up and down that he had tasted watermelon in a wine. So my host explained to me that what people experience when tasting wine is evocative: it draws upon their memories and unique experiences, focused into the experience now with the wine. The same glass of wine evokes a completely different narrative in each drinker.
Now think about that as part of the central sacrament of our faith. What is the new covenant that we experience in this shared cup? Certainly not a set of rules permanently inscribed on stone. It's something more dynamic, our many different stories joining at a common table and cup, our memories becoming a new experience that we want to share with others.
I think you (via Ebert) touch upon what really brings that evocative ritual to life, to faith, in that these joining diverse narratives meeting at the cup and table aren't just memories, aren't just immediate experience, but that there is a prophetic aspect present. Otherwise we would just be any old dinner party. It's this beloved community of the Church, like you say, finding the evoking future not in drink but in the gathering of God's people to speak and live good news.