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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-11-03, Page 16PAGE 16. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2011. By Pastor Perry Chuipka St. John’s and Trinity Anglican Churches Remembering for humans was easier for us some 2,500 years ago One day, young Sarah was watching her mother make a roast sirloin of beef. She cut off the ends, wrapped it in string, seasoned it and set it in the roasting dish. Sarah politely asked her mom why she cut off the ends of the roast. Mum replied, “I can’t remember why, but I know that it was the way that my mother had done it.” That night grandma came to dinner and Sarah and her mother asked why she had cut the end off of the roast before cooking. After some thought grandma replied, “I can’t remember why, but I cook the meat the way my mother had done it.” Now great-grandma was quite old and lived in a residential nursing home, so Sarah, her mum and grandma went to visit her and again asked the very same question. Great-grandma looked at them a bit surprised and said, ‘So it would fit in the roasting dish, of course.’ Have you ever done something and forgotten why you do it that way or have you ever tried to remember something and it just wouldn’t come to you? I think if we are at all human, forgetting things or trying to remember something is a common occurrence for us. The question I wonder about was it always this difficult for human beings to remember something? Apparently not! My wife and I were watching Allan Gregg’s In Conversation program on TVO a few weeks ago. He was interviewing Joshua Foer who wrote the book, Moonwalking with Einstein: The art and science of remembering everything. Joshua told Allan that 2,500 years ago people knew the art of remembering everything. He tells the story of a Greek poet Synesius who had attended a huge banquet in a palace where he was reciting some of his poetry for the large audience. After the banquet he is one of the first to leave the building. Within minutes, after he departs from the building it collapses and all the people inside are crushed to death. The authorities are trying to figure out who had died in this terrible tragedy because the people were unrecognizable in the rubble. Synesius was able, in his mind’s eye to remember where everybody was sitting at the banquet. From that experience, he developed spacial memory which one creates a palace in their mind. In this palace you put images of what you want to remember. When you want to remember what’s in the palace, you recall the image and it brings back the memory. You can also create several palaces for different categories of things. You could create a palace in your mind just for remembering all your extended families birthdays or a palace for remembering all your family member’s phone numbers. Apparently this works because Joshua entered some remembering conferences and won them using this method of remembering. The other technique that he shared was adding weird and different things to something that you want to remember. For example, say I want to remember my wife's birthday on Jan. 4. I think of my wife’s birthday and then attach an image in my mind with her blowing out a huge birthday cake the size of a table with four huge pillar-like white candles on the cake. Joshua says the weirder the imagery the better. He also tells a funny story of a preacher who remembered his sermons by heart by adding some very sexy imagery to them. It worked for him because he became famous for his sermons. At least he could remember them, I am not sure if his congregation remembered anything from them! The other thing that Joshua talks about in his book is that our long- term memory is much better than our short-term memory because we use different parts of our brain to remember long-term and short-term memory. He also added that when you are talking to older people, refer them to their long-term memory and the conversation will be much easier for them. Last week while I was away at my hometown in Sudbury I tried this method out when I visited an older friend of mine who is 87. His wife told me before I went into visit him that he was not doing well at all. She told me, “he can’t carry a conversation and gets frustrated very easily and then forgets his train of thought.” I went into his room and immediately got him to use his long- term memory by telling him a story about an experience with him 15 years ago. I noticed his attentiveness and then he went on to name other people who were with us in that experience. We continued to talk about the past and I had a wonderful experience with him that afternoon. His wife was amazed and wondered what we spoke about. I told her Gerry loves to talk about the past, you should try it with him sometime. It is obvious to me that his wife often wants to talk to him about the here and now: how he is feeling, is he getting any better and so on. These are all conversations which he has to use short-term memory which he cannot recall. So, it is no wonder he gets frustrated and then gives up. Finally, we are not as good with our memory today because we have so many gadgets that do our memory work for us. Our phones remember all our important numbers, (and depending on the phone they will do more than that for us), our calculators remembers our times tables for us, our television remembers, if you have PVR, all our favourite shows, our smartphones ( I don’t own one...thank God) remember all our daily, weekly and monthly events, our clock radios remember when to wake us up. Certainly we need some of these devises to remember some things, but I wonder if we are taking away from exercising our brains with all these gadgets. I began by asking the question I wonder if it was always difficult for human beings to remember something? I think you can see that it wasn’t difficult for our forefathers long ago to remember things. They didn’t have all the gadgets and they also had more time or made more THE CATHOLIC PARISHES OF NORTH HURON AND NORTH PERTH CORDIALLY INVITE YOU TO ATTEND HOLY MASS. OUR SUNDAY LITURGIES ARE AS FOLLOWS: Brussels: St. Ambrose Saturday 6:00 p.m. 17 Flora Street Wingham: Sacred Heart Sunday 9:00 a.m. 220 Carling Terrace Listowel: St. Joseph Sunday 11:00 a.m. 1025 Wallace Avenue N. Youre Invited to come worship with us Sunday, November 6 Brussels Public School at 10:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. Sunday School for children 4 to 11 years of age (mornings only) Childcare provided for infants and toddlers Coffee & cookies after the morning service For additional details please contact Pastor Andrew Versteeg 519.887.8621 Steve Klumpenhower 519.887.8651 Rick Packer 519.527.0173 Chris McMichael 519.482.1644 You’re Invited To Join Us In Worship Hwy. 4, Blyth 519-523-4743 www.blythcrc.ca SUNDAYS Morning Service 10:00 am Evening Service 7:00 pm in the Clinton CRC BLYTH CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH MELVILLE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH BRUSSELS Rev. Elwin Garland SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6 Wheelchair accessible ~ Nursery care available 519-887-2664 10:00 am - Sunday Morning Worship - Sunday School getlivingwater.org Pastor: Ernest Dow ~ 519-523-4848 Living Water Christian Fellowship November 6: Matt. 25:1-13 “Making the Cut in the Oil Crisis” 10:30 a.m. ~ Worship & Sunday School at Blyth Public School, corner of King & Mill Tuesdays 7:30 pm - Wingham Bible Study 1st & 3rd Wednesdays 7:30 pm - Women At The Well Evangelical Missionary Church Worship Service & Sunday School at 11 a.m. CORNER OF DINSLEY & MILL STREETS MINISTER Rev. Gary Clark, BA, M. Div. All Welcome MUSIC DIRECTOR Floyd Herman, BA, M. Ed.OFFICE: 519-523-4224 NOVEMBER 6 Remembering All Casualties of War NOVEMBER 13 Following Your Heart Home BRUSSELS - ETHEL PASTORAL CHARGE UNITED CHURCH OF CANADA Sandra Cable, Worship Leader Church Office 519-887-6259 E-mail - bepc@wightman.ca Sunday, November 6 135th Anniversary of Brussels United Church Worship Service and Sunday School - 11:00 a.m. at Brussels United Church Special music by barbershop quartet “Midnight Express” Note - No service at Ethel United Church on November 6 Celebrating our Christian Faith together in worship THE ANGLICAN CHURCH OF CANADA Welcomes you to come and worship with us Trinity, Blyth 9:15 a.m. Church Office: 519-357-4883 St. John's, Brussels 11:15 a.m. 519-887-6862 Sunday, November 6 Rev. Perry Chuipka www.nabcom.ca/church 119 John’s Ave., Auburn 519-526-1131 www.huronchapel.org Rev. Mark Royall, Sr. Pastor 9:25 a.m. Sunday School for all ages 10:30 a.m. Men’s Breakfast Saturday, November 5 at 7:30 am at Stickers Restaurant From the Minister’s StudyRemembering used to be easier: Chuipka Continued on page 20