Friday, November 19, 2010

Memory, Reason, Skill, and...

How many times have I prayed Eucharistic Prayer C in the Book of Common Prayer, asserting that God has “blessed us with memory, reason, and skill”? The other day I realized that God has given us another function of our mind, that of feeling. Not fingertips’ detecting rough surfaces, or temperatures, or physical pain—but emotions. This area of cerebral function is missing from animals, or immature at best. How satisfying it is to FEEL love, joy, contentment, anticipation—all the pleasant emotions! It’s also a good thing to feel fear, anger, stress, and other unpleasant feelings, for at least we know we’re alive and human, and can learn from them, work through them to become more whole.
I am blessed to have loved and been loved by two exceptional women in my 85 years. How sterile it would have been to simply recognize their usefulness to my personal economy, and missed the passion, the camaraderie, yes—the “warm fuzzies” that added to my memory, reason, and skill. Not just the intellectual realization of feelings, but the feelings themselves! And I’ve discovered that to become mature, I MUST learn to value my emotions as God-given. A prime example: I figure I’m about as good as how well I’ve learned to love. There are many stories of folks on their death bed who lamented that they hadn’t told their family members how much they loved them; how many have you heard of who wished that they had spent more time at the office? Yet I remember being taught as the ideal for which one should reach was being productive. No one even hinted that loving was the far higher virtue!
We’re blessed with memory, reason, skill, and the ability to feel—praise God!

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