Time and Memory

doi:10.1017/CCO9781139020886.026

22 - Time and Memory

from Part III - Contemporary Questions

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2012

Patricia Dailey

Edited by

Amy Hollywood and

Patricia Z. Beckman

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Amy Hollywood: Affiliation:
Harvard Divinity School
Patricia Z. Beckman: Affiliation:
St Olaf College, Minnesota

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Summary

Forgetting the created
Memory of the creator
Awareness of the inner
And always loving the beloved
Saint John of the Cross, The Sum of Perfection

At the beginning, as in the ancient shaman or Hindu forms of mystics, there is a rhythm. Where does it come from? No one knows…. The sounds, resembling fragments of refrain, form an uncanny memory, prior to meaning. One would be hard put to say what it is the memory of: it recalls something that is not a past; it awakens what the body does not know about itself.

Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable

Mystical texts are riddled by different forms of temporal expression: by dates that mark the contiguity of liturgical hours and visions, by memories of divine visitations, by a desire to inhabit a memory of the imitation of Christ, by promises of divine love and hope for a future moment of perfection in God. Generally speaking, two different times are expressed, one chronological or historical and the second atemporal or eternal, a time outside of time, the time of God, which is not subject to change or to mediation and remains identical with itself. This Augustinian model, inherited by many Christian mystics, posits a human existence necessarily mediated by time, one that aspires to the promise of eternal salvation or union by means of memory.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism , pp. 341 - 350

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCO9781139020886.026 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2012

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