LEST WE FORGET

Rabbi Harold Kushner had a story I found thought provoking.  It is quoted in Thomas L. Friedman's book, “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”.  Since Friedman didn't reference it, I assume it can be shared.  At least, it's worth a try: There was a village where people were afflicted with strange plagues of forgetfulness, a kind of contagious amnesia.  Starting with the oldest inhabitants and working its way through the population, the plague causes people to forget the names of even the most common everyday objects.  One young man, still unaffected, tries to limit the damage by putting labels on everything.  "This is a table," "This is a window", "This is a cow; it has to be milked every morning".  And at the entrance to the town on the main road, he put up two large signs.  One reads, "The name of our village is Macondo," and the larger one reads, "God exists."

Friedman says, "The message is clear.   We can and probably will forget most of what we have learned in life -- the math, the history, the chemical formulas, the addresses and phone numbers of the first house we lived in when we got married -- and all that forgetting will do us no harm.  But if we forget that there is a God, something profoundly human in us will be lost."

--  U.M. Bishop William B. Oden in “The North Texas United Methodist Reporter”  November 3, 2000

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