Published: August 06, 2008 12:19 am            

Up a creek without a prayer

Memory is a hot topic these days.

With the graying of America, more and more attention is being paid to aging and its relationship with mental acuity.

Americans are more than twice as likely to fear losing their mental capacity than their physical capacity as they age, according to a 2006 poll by Research!America, a nonprofit public education and advocacy alliance.

As a result, science is spending a great deal of time and money studying the human brain’s capacity to store and retrieve information.

Eating well can enhance our memory, researchers tell us, as does taking cholesterol-lowering statins.

Brain-exercising video games and computer software are becoming big business, topping $225 million in revenue in 2007.

No matter their diet or their level of brain fitness, however, the average person can only hold three or four things in their mind at once, according to a study by a group from the University of Missouri.

Some things, of course, are ingrained in our memories, carved like initials on the trunk of an old tree.

Like the words to “Happy Birthday,” for instance, or the Pledge of Allegiance or “Star Spangled Banner.”

Then, of course, there is the Lord’s Prayer, words all of us learn at a very young age, the petition to the Almighty recorded in both the gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Jesus first instructed his followers how to properly pray during his Sermon on the Mount.

Everybody remembers that, right?

Not necessarily.

I was chosen recently for a simple task, offering a prayer during our church’s Sunday service while our pastor was on vacation.

No big deal, I thought. I had, after all, done it before.

So it came to the appointed time in the service and I took my place at the lectern, adjusted the microphone and began.

At first my prayer came easily, the words flowing as if from some inner spring of inspiration.

Then I said something to the effect of, “now join me in the prayer Jesus taught us to pray ...”

And my mind went blank.

I was hoping someone else would start out, and that would trigger my memory of the rest.

No such luck. Everyone just sat, silently, some stealing stealthy glances up at me standing like an idiot at the front of the church, sweating.

Frantically I began searching my memory. “Four score and seven years ago ...” nope. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” wrong. “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,” fine words, but not the ones I was desperately searching for.

The seconds marched by unrelentingly. I thought I was going to be sick. Then I felt like I would faint. I made one more foray into the deepest recesses of my mind. The only thing I could come up with was “Jesus loves me, this I know.”

Finally I heard a still, small voice. It was me, saying “and I’ve forgotten it.” Instantly someone said, “Our father,” and it all came back to me. Now I remembered everything.

It was then I remembered the words to the prayer had been on the television monitor just a few feet in front of me all along, not to mention on hard copies of the PowerPoint presentation of the service on the lectern right in front of me.

Someday I’m sure I’ll look back on the whole incident and laugh. Not someday soon, mind you, but someday.



Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle.