Grateful Memory

If I were an elephant, I would praise the Lord with my trunk ... The old song I learned in Sunday school punctuated the grateful memory of a worldview.

What is a worldview? What is behind your thoughts about almost everything? For more than thirty years, James W. Sire has dealt with this question. In the book, Naming the Elephant, he offers readers a more mature thought on the concept of a world view, addressing issues such as

• What is the history of the concept itself?
• What is the first question you should ask when formulating a worldview?
• How are worldviews formed both existentially and intellectually?
• Is the world view primarily an intellectual system, a way of life or a history?
• What are the public and private dimensions of a world view?
• What role can the world view have in assessing one's own world view and that of others, especially in the light of pluralism in today's world?

James W. Sire (PhD, University of Missouri), former editor of InterVarsity Press, is an active speaker and writer. He taught English, philosophy, theology and short courses at many universities and seminaries. He continues to be a frequent guest speaker in the United States and Europe.

In his widely used book, The Universe Next Door, first published in 1976, Sire offered a succinct definition of worldview and cataloged, in a nutshell, some basic alternatives to worldview. Students, critics, new literatures and continued reflection led him to reexamine and refine his definition of worldview. Giving Names to the Elephant keeps company for The Universe Next door as the fruit of this effort. Here is an excellent resource for exploring more deeply how and why worldview thinking can help you navigate your pluralistic universe.

Do you remember Elephant's Memory? Also known as Plastic Ono Elephant's Memory Band New York? (dub-o-do) Elephant's Memory was an American rock band formed in New York in the late 1960s, known primarily for supporting John Lennon and Yoko Ono from the end of 1971 to 1973. For live performances with Lennon and Ono, the band was known as Plastic Ono Elephant's Memory Band. In 1968, they added Carly Simon as lead singer. In 1969 the lineup expanded to include John Ward (bass), Chester Ayers (guitar), Myron Yules (bass and trombone), R. Sussmann (keyboards), Michal Shapiro (vocals), Guy Peritore ) and David Cohen (guitar, keyboards and vocals). Known throughout the Greenwich Village area as a politically active street band , Elephant's Memory supported Lennon and Ono on the double album Some Time in New York City during recording sessions in March 1972. The album was released in June 1972 in the United States and September 1972 in the United Kingdom. Later in 1972, they were announced as Elephant Memories of Plastic Ono's band and played with Lennon and Ono on various TV shows, albums and shows. On August 30, 1972, with the addition of John Ward on bass and Jim Keltner on drums, the band played with Lennon and Ono in the famous One to One Concert organized by Geraldo Rivera to benefit Willowbrook State School for mentally handicapped children. The concert was filmed and recorded, later released in February 1986 as the album Live In New York City. On September 4, they played live again with Lennon and Ono on the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon, playing "Imagine," "Now or Never," and "Give Peace a Chance."

What is this information worth? I think someone would have to have the memory of an elephant to be able to talk about the band and really remember all the trivial things about their existence. For playful purposes of memory challenge, I pulled the data above Wikipedia. To tell you the truth, of all that has been quoted above, my weak (and still very sharp) memory only recognizes, under lenses of condensed milk, Carly Simon. (oh boy!)

People often say that elephants are the animals with the best memory resources, so, after a few trivia reviews of the song, here is some interesting information about the largest mammal in the world:

• Elephants eat between 72 and 158 pounds of food per day.
• Baby elephants weigh about 90 kg at birth.
• Elephant tusks are made of dentin, calcium and salt.
• The average life span of an elephant is 80 years. Elephants use more than 70 vocalizations and 160 visual and tactile signs for daily communication. (Thanks Wikipedia, -He! He! Mole!)

Scientists failed to measure elephant intelligence accurately. However, for decades, experts have observed the behavior of pachyderms and have concluded that they rank among the most intelligent in the animal kingdom.

Growing up in the Presbyterian shepherd family, my memory served me well, when I learned "of color" (heart), the number 64 hymn of our denominational hymnal, Thank you! Later, already an adult, listening again and again to the soil of the suffering voice of his friend Valter Jr., who suffered enough in his efforts and still sang of his Grateful memory!

Grateful Memory

My lips shall never cease, O Christ,
To bless thee, to sing thy glory;
For I hold in your soul your immense love:
Grateful Memory

When lost I wandered sorrowful
And in dense darkness my walk followed,
You searched for me, two heaven sent
Light that guides me!

When oppressed by mundane choice,
In bad ways I was distraught,
Your tender voice gave me rest.
Who called me!

To the strong arms I ran confidently,
Sweet and kind, you did not refuse me
And in your immense, gentle love, so pure,
You scared me!

Oh! Never, never will my lips cease
To bless thee, to sing thy glory;
For in my soul you are always, O Christ,
Thank you!

Renaming the elephant - "A toast to our good qualities, and also to the qualities of our good" I learned from my father, who learned from his father. I never understood right (until I grew up) what's in that toast! Today I understand that it aims to highlight what is good in everything - a search for gratitude. The search for gratitude has shown me that when life is going well, a grateful memory allows us to celebrate and magnify goodness and good things. But when does life go wrong? In the midst of the economic turmoil that took over our country. In crises in our churches, our families and our most intimate lives; I have often asked if people can - or should - have this grateful memory under such terrible circumstances. For these situations to be seen as a blessing from God and so that we can see life with a remembrance of gratitude, it is necessary to rename the elephant. That is, to look at life with new eyes or, better yet, with new lenses.

My answer is that a grateful memory not only helps - but it is essential. In fact, it is precisely under conditions of crisis, when we have more to gain from a perspective of gratitude about life. Faced with demoralization, gratitude has the power to energize. In the face of brokenness, gratitude has the power to heal. In the face of despair, a grateful memory has the power to bring hope. In other words, gratitude can help us deal with difficult times.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that a grateful memory comes easily or naturally in a crisis. It's easy to feel grateful for good things. No one is grateful to have lost a job, a home or good health or to have had a devastating impact on their retirement portfolio.

But it is vital to make a distinction between having a grateful memory, or feeling grateful and grateful. We do not have full control over our emotions. We can not easily feel grateful, less depressed, or happy. Feelings follow the way we look at the world, the thoughts we have about the way things are, the way things should be and the distance between these two points.

Elephants are incredible creatures. Earth's largest terrestrial mammals show a wide range of behavioral and emotional patterns in their 80 years of life. They grieve with the dead bodies, members of the flock and may even recognize their own reflections in a mirror. And, of course, there's that old saying: "Elephants never forget." While it may be an exaggeration, there is more truth in the saying than you realize.

In nature, the memory of an elephant is critical to its survival - and its herd. Each flock has a matriarchal structure, with an older female in command. When younger males in the group reach sexual maturity - usually around the age of 14 - they leave the herd to walk alone or occasionally form groups with other males. Proof of the long memories of elephants is in their behavior: when confronted with an unknown elephant, matriarchs will pile up in defensive positions because they realize that these elephants can pose a threat to the safety of the herd.

In our seemingly innocent but selfishly defensive wisdom, we often try to excuse our carelessness by reformulating our own history of events and facts that make up our lives. Much like an accompaniment band, just like Elephant's memory, our pachyderm memory often gathers a handful of random data that might justify the anger we feel. So, like the band that no one has ever heard of (and does not even want to know), so do we form our ungrateful and imbecile elephant memory.

But we are not animals. We were created from scratch. Creation of God in the image of his perfect "being." We are fallen and totally depraved of what we were originally. And in order for each one to be able to function well first when faced with unfamiliar events that a fallen life of grace will bring, there is a need for gratitude and a grateful memory, so that we can, secondly, wait confidently for a time and a place where we can recognize ourselves and our kind in the safety of God's flock, both here and now, though perhaps not yet, and in the certainty of the Glory to come.

Grateful memory is a choice - a predominant attitude that endures and is relatively immune to the gains and losses that enter and leave our lives. When a disaster occurs, grateful memory provides a perspective from which we can see life in its entirety and not be oppressed by temporary circumstances. Yes, that perspective is hard to come by - but the word of God says it's worth the effort.


Those who trust in the LORD will be like Mount Zion, who does not tremble, but abides forever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is about his people from this time forth and for ever. For the scepter of wickedness shall not stand upon the lot of the righteous, lest the righteous shall stretch out his hand to iniquity. Do good, O Lord, to the good and the upright in heart. As for those who turn aside to their crooked ways, the LORD will bring them with them that do wickedness; Peace will be upon Israel. (Psalm 125)

Elephants not only remember companions with whom they have spent long periods of time. A pair of captive elephants showed that these animals can recognize other friendly elephants, even when they spend only a short time together. In 1999, an aliya (for those who did not know, the female of the elephant is called aliya) called Jenny was very excited when it was put together with another aliya called Shirley. After observing the animals' background, the zoo workers in Tennessee discovered that the two had performed in the same circus for only a few months - 22 years earlier.

Their magnificent memories help elephants stay alive in ways that go beyond recognizing threats. One of the best examples of elephant cognition comes from desert-adapted elephants where matriarchs remember where reliable water can be found and are able to guide their flocks to water over long distances over many years. This is a fairly clear indication that elephants have a great ability to remember details about their spatial environment for a very long time. Studies have also shown that matriarchs who have experienced periods of drought before will lead their herds to more fertile land, while younger matriarchs who have not had a drought are more likely to remain.

But neither elephant, nor bear, nor goldfish, I am ... One of the key factors in glorifying God and enjoying it forever (the chief end of man) is when we are able to look at the now and examine the history and the events of a past, through a grateful memory, that is, praising God for the greatest gift. As Paul simply put it: Praise God for the greatest of gifts. (2 Corinthians 9:15)

Thank God for your indescribable gift! What is your indescribable gift? (If God made me so, so I will praise ...)
Some think it is the gift of salvation; others think that it is the gift of Jesus Christ. Why not both? Salvation is given to us in Jesus Christ. Paul wants to leave the discussion of giving, reminding us again that God is the greatest giver. He gives the gift beyond description: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16) This means that Jesus is a gift. Salvation is a gift. We do not know that. We receive Jesus freely, we receive salvation exactly as we would receive a gift. Just as the children of Israel, when they murmured, received the gift of being saved from the death caused by serpent bites by simply looking at the serpent raised by Moses. (Numbers 21: 9)

If we can conquer something, it is not a gift. And if it is not a gift, why and how can we have a grateful memory of what with so much cost and pain we conquered? But if we perceive the gift of grace, and remember how we were evil, we can now be grateful for what we receive freely. This is a great memory!

This means that Jesus is an indescribable gift. Salvation is an indescribable gift. The glory of the gift of Jesus and the greatness of the gift of salvation can not be adequately described. Paul is not saying that we should not describe the gift of Jesus or the gift of salvation. He is simply saying that it is impossible to adequately describe the present. It is beyond the full description! "JESUS CHRIST, the gift of God's love for mankind, is an indescribable blessing, no one can conceive, let alone declare, how great this gift is, for these things the angels wish to look upon.Therefore it may be called unspeakable "gift, as he is the greatest that God has given or can give to man".

In fact, when Paul writes his indescribable gift, the word he uses for indescribable (anekdiegetos) is not found in any ancient Greek writing before this time. Apparently Paul invented the word to describe the unspeakable!

Grateful memory means giving thanks to God: This means that the indescribable gift of God should fill us with a grateful memory. If we truly understand and appreciate the indescribable gift God has given us, our lives will be filled with gratitude. In affliction we never forget pain and evil; the mercies we barely remember! Our hearts, vivid to complain, and dead to gratitude. We had ten thousand mercies for one every single tribulation, and yet grievances to our thanksgiving were from ten thousand to one! How does God tolerate this and still love us?

How fitting for Paul to conclude these two chapters on giving focus to his indescribable gift! The best motivation to give is always gratitude for the indescribable gift of God to us. The indescribable gift of God is what inspires every true gift. The apostle concludes all this discourse on contributing to the relief of these poor members of Christ, who is the Author and Finisher of all grace ... who without the influence of his grace they would have, they could do nothing.

Remember the evil - trials and suffering can, in fact, refine and deepen gratitude, if we allow them to show us that we should not consider things guaranteed. In the United States, a national holiday of gratitude, Thanksgiving, was born and raised in difficult times. The first Thanksgiving happened after almost half of the pilgrims died of a violent winter and year. It became a national holiday in 1863 in the midst of the Civil War and was transferred to its present date in the 1930s after the Great Depression.

Because? Well, when times are good, people value prosperity and begin to believe they are invulnerable. In times of uncertainty, however, people realize how powerless they are to control their own destiny. If you start to see that everything you have, everything with what you have counted, can be taken away, it becomes much more difficult to take for granted.

So the crisis can make us more grateful - gratitude also helps us deal with the crisis. Cultivating consciously a grateful memory builds a kind of psychological immune system that can cushion us when we fall. There is scientific evidence that grateful people are more resistant to stress, whether small daily difficulties or major personal disorders. The contrast between suffering and redemption serves as the basis for one of my tips for practicing grateful memory: remember evil.

Elephants are able to use their impressive 4.7-kilogram brains to encode identification and survival details by printing the key data in their memory to be remembered later. But the incredible memory of an elephant comes only with age and experience - and older and larger elephants are often hunted. The tragedy is that when one of these [elephants] is lost to poaching, memory and information die with it, leaving the rest of the herd at a disadvantage - and having severe consequences for the species as a whole. In our fallen nature, we may try to use our smaller but still sharper memory to try to understand a whole world that seeks to steal our own souls. In redemption, to be part of a flock, to have Christ as a grateful memory will make our search for joy in survival a new and transformed reality, where we are now parents, brothers and children in our grateful memory of creation, fall, redemption and glory .

It works like this: Think about the worst times in your life, your sadness, your losses, your sadness - and then remember that here you are, able to remember them, that you did it in the worst moments of your life, through of the trauma, you have passed the test, endured the temptation, survived the bad relationship, you are coming out of the dark. Remember the bad things, so look to see where you are now - and know where you will be!

This process of remembering how difficult life used to be and how far we have come, and where we should go, establishes an explicit contrast that is fertile ground for gratitude. Our minds think in factual terms - mental comparisons we make between the way things are and how things might have been different. Contrasting the present with negative moments in the past can make us feel happier (or at least less unhappy) and improve our overall sense of well-being. This opens the door to deal with gratitude.

Try this little exercise: First, think of one of the most unfortunate events you've ever experienced. How often do you see yourself thinking about this event today? The contrast with the present that makes you feel grateful and satisfied? Do you realize that your current life situation is not as bad as it could be? Try to realize and appreciate how much better your life is now. The point is not to ignore or forget the past, but to develop a fruitful frame of reference in the present, from which we can see experiences and events.

There is another way to promote a grateful memory: face your own mortality. In a recent study, researchers asked half of the participants to imagine a scenario in which they, trapped in a burning building, overcome by smoke, die. The other half laughed and thanked the teacher for not having killed them ... This resulted in a substantial increase in the levels of gratitude, as the teacher discovered when he compared this group to two conditions of control that were not compelled to imagine their own deaths.

In these ways, remembering evil can help us to appreciate good. As the German theologian and Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, "Gratitude changes the pains of memory to a quiet joy." We know that gratitude increases happiness, but why? Grateful memory maximizes happiness in many ways, and one reason is that it helps us reshape memories of unpleasant events in ways that lessen their unpleasant emotional impact. This implies that grateful confrontation involves the pursuit of positive consequences from negative events. For example, a coping of gratitude may involve seeing how a stressful event shaped who we are today and led us to re-evaluate what is really important in life.

Reformulating the sinister Debby said that David looked back on our family history as someone who uses condensed milk lenses ... To say that a thankful memory is a useful strategy for dealing with offensive feelings does not mean that we should try to ignore or deny suffering and pain. You see, what my brother does, is to put all your memories into a frame of thought that resembles the Bible's description of a perfect creation-a terrible and total fall-a factual redemption through grace and the right hopes of future consummation in Christ.

Grateful memory is not positive psychology. Many of today's trends in coaching and positive pseudo-psychologies are failing to recognize the value of negative emotions. Positivist psychologies have been too negative about negativity and too positive about positivity. To deny that life has its share of disappointments, frustrations, losses, hurts, setbacks and sadness would be unreal and unsustainable. Life hurts. No amount of positive thinking exercises will change that truth. But when we have a grateful memory, we can rightly put all the events of life, good or seemingly bad, into their own categories of God's work in our world and in our intimate lives.

So, telling people simply to commit themselves, to count their blessings, and to remember how much they still have to be thankful for, can certainly do so much harm. Processing a life experience through the love and grace of God does not mean using a sweet lens of condensed milk and definitely does not mean denying negativity. It is not a form of superficial merrymaking.

Instead, it means realizing the power you have in Christ to turn an obstacle into an opportunity. It means reframing a loss into a potential gain, reshaping negativity into positive channels of gratitude to God - (Just what interests me ...). And this can only be done when we freely receive Jesus Christ as prophet, priest and king of our lives.

Ih, I forgot! How does a nice memory work? In a study conducted at a local seminar, participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups of writers who would recall and report an unpleasant memory-a loss, betrayal, victimization, or some other personally disturbing experience. The first group wrote for 20 minutes on issues irrelevant to open memory. The second wrote about his experience concerning his open memory.

The teacher asked the third group to focus on the positive aspects of a difficult experience - and find out what could make them feel grateful. The results showed that they had more closure and less unpleasant emotional impact than the participants who had just written about the experience without being asked to see how it could be redeemed with a grateful memory. Participants were never told not to think about the negative aspects of the experience or to deny or ignore the pain. In addition, participants who discovered reasons for being grateful showed less intrusive memories, such as wondering why this happened, whether it could have been avoided, or whether they believed it had happened for a greater reason. Thinking gratefully, this study has shown, can help heal disturbing memories and, in a sense, redeem them - a result echoed in many other counseling studies.

In another research, people with debilitating physical ailments were invited to compose a narrative about a time when they felt a deep sense of gratitude for someone or something. They were instructed to recreate this experience in their minds so they could feel the emotions as if they had transposed back in time to the event itself. It also made them reflect on what they felt in that situation and how they expressed those feelings. Faced with progressive illnesses, people often find life extremely challenging, painful and frustrating. As I read the research, I wondered if it was possible that they would find something to thank. For many of them, life revolved around visits to the clinic and pharmacy (or corner toe). I would not have been surprised if resentment obscured gratitude.

As it turned out, most interviewees had difficulty in establishing themselves in a specific case - they simply had so much in their lives that they were grateful for it. I was struck by the depth of feeling they conveyed in their essays and by the apparent power of gratitude that transforms life.

It was evident from reading these narrative accounts that (1) gratitude can be a deeply intense feeling, (2) gratitude for gifts that others overlook most easily can be the most powerful and frequent form of gratitude, and (3) gratitude can be chosen in spite of the situation or circumstances. I was also struck by the redemptive turnaround that occurred in almost half of these narratives: from something bad (suffering, adversity, grief) there came something good (new life or new opportunities) for which the person felt deeply grateful.

If you are disturbed by an open memory or an unpleasant experience of the past, consider trying to rephrase how you think about it using the language of grateful memory. Unpleasant experiences in our lives need not be of the traumatic variety so that we can benefit from them with gratitude. Whether it is a big or a small event, for the perfection of our worldview, on the same key as Sire, naming the elephant, here are some additional questions for you to ask yourself, at one time or another, to rename the elephant:

• What lessons has experience taught me?
• Can I find ways to be grateful for what happened to me now, even though I was not at the time it happened?
• What skill did experience take from me that surprised me?
• How am I now more the person I want to be because of this? Have my negative feelings about experience limited or impeded my ability to have a grateful memory since it occurred?
• Has the experience removed a personal obstacle that once prevented me from feeling gratitude?
• How can I categorize Creation, Fall, Redemption and Glory with Christ, our Prophet, Priest and King?
• How can I think of my painful memories of the whole body of which Christ is grateful memory?

Remember, your goal is not to relive the experience, but rather to have a new perspective on it. Simply rehearsing a disturbing event makes us feel worse about it. That is why catharsis has rarely been effective. Emotional ventilation without accompanying vision does not produce change.

There is a poem, which turned into song made my heart seek a grateful memory even if I did not have it for remembrance. Gióia Júnior wrote, and I in the darkest moments of my life, I sang:


I know that my Redeemer lives

Where am I? I do not know - and I do not even know where I've been
and where I will be - but I know that He lives!
And as I know that my Lord and King lives,
I know that with Him I have been and with Him I will be!
If there is reason to stir up peace, this is his law:
my Redeemer lives and I too shall live!

No amount of articles about memories or elephants will help, unless you are able to take a fresh and redemptive perspective on the events of your life. This is an advantage that people with grateful memory have - and it is an ability to name the past, not with the memory of an elephant, but with the grateful memory of who loved you the most.