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Pilgrim Life

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Going Down Memory Lane

Going Down Memory Lane

Last updated on: September 9, 2024 at 7:04 pm by Fred Wooden

Going Down Memory Lane 2024-09-09T19:04:07-04:00 Fred Wooden

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We all know that term, Going Down Memory Lane, meaning a wander back in time. We are time travelers as much as we are space travelers. Can a time journey be a pilgrimage, though? Yes.

My Memory Lane is a Pilgrimage of Race

Underside of Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma AL Last week I published my fourth book, and the second dealing directly with pilgrimage. It is called “A Long Time Coming – A Pilgrimage of Race.”

It recounts my physical pilgrimage retracing the 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery and also my memories of race as a child and an adult. The one inspired the other. For example, in discovering that children were part of the march, it brought up the recent memory of when I was running (unsuccessfully) for office. Here is that story:

In the summer of 2018, I was knocking on doors as a candidate for office. I did not win, but the experience stayed with me, especially when an older Black woman answered her door and invited us in. You never go inside, campaign training says, but something felt right so we accepted her invitation.

She sat down in a threadbare wing chair and unfolded a quilt she was making. Across her lap she had pieced her life, a mural in cloth, and wanted us to see it.

“Here is where I was born,” she gestured to a place on the bottom edge near the Gulf of Mexico. “Here is when I came to Grand Rapids from Mississippi,” a little further up the fabric road she had sewn. We looked on appreciatively and my manager took pictures. “And here is when I got arrested at a protest when I was 13.”

That was so far from my life at thirteen, when I heard it, I felt as Dorothy when she said, “I have a feeling we are not in Kansas anymore.”

Life is a Time Capsule

In a sense, your life is a time capsule for your later self. Remember Time Capsules? In my youth they were boxes set in cornerstones of buildings to be opened years later. When you stroll down Memory Lane you are opening your own time capsule and may discover things you forgot were there. That’s when a stroll becomes a pilgrimage. Because pilgrimage is about revelation. Not “Paul on the road to Damascus” encounters, but moments when the past is suddenly speaking to your present.

Speaking of Memory

Almost fifty years ago I did a seminar on Intensive Journaling as designed by Ira Progoff. Though I maintained it for a while, it did not last long. However, the idea was to use a journal in creative ways to engage your inner life and your earlier life.

That’s pilgrim life in essence. If I were not already keeping a diary already I might resume it. But you need not do the formal training to set out. Start your memory pilgrimage more simply. Write down stories from your past, for your descendants if you have them, or for extended family, or just for yourself.

No need to go all Proust; start with a memory you would share with someone, like that one above.

Time Keeps On Slipping Into the Future

So says the song. But you can go back along the path in your mind. And if you do as a pilgrim would, look for the revelations lying along the way, little ones that are emotional easter eggs with something to give. Anyone can take these pilgrim walks, you know. The question is whether you have the nerve.

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About W. Frederick Wooden

Fred (technically Weldon Frederick) Wooden is a late life author, because he spent over forty years as a clergyman in six churches spread over five states. While doing that he wrote sermons and columns and wondered if any of it would matter in the long run. His notes from various travels, short stories written for fun, a memoir that morphed into a novel, a year of writing haiku as a spiritual exercise, are all ripening into books now that he has more time to edit and revise. Fred has led many lives - composer, pastor, pilgrim, political candidate, newspaper columnist, radio host, father and spouse. They have taken him from boyhood in Maryland to study in Missouri and Illinois, work in Massachusets, Austin Texas, Brooklyn NY and Grand Rapids Michigan. He has explored Mexico, New Mexico, Peru, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Turkey, India, China, Japan and Europe. Those who have read his travel accounts often say, "I feel like I am actually with you as you go." Fred takes you along whatever the journey he is on. You can read more about the author here.

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