When Memory Becomes Destination
JENNIFER J. CAMP
4 min read ⭑
The February air is sweet and rich with almond blossoms, the soil moist and cool underneath my feet. I take off my shoes to feel the thick earth, which adheres to my bare toes. Bright new grass sprouts on the orchard floor, and I lie on top of it beneath the tree branches, the white blossoms and the blue sky.
I am 11 years old, and I am 52. I am 16 years old, and I am 35. I am six, and I am 27. Younger. Older. Ageless. Always. New.
There are no boundaries to time and memory — the beautiful and the devastating, the hope-filled and the hard. Reality lives in the supernatural and spiritual, beyond what is temporal, inside the memory of what we always have — and what we don’t yet know.
As I write this, my body is in Texas, my knee swollen and bruised from a two-day-old ski injury in Utah: a torn ACL and fractured bone. But my mind and heart are somewhere else: in memory that is more than memory — in moments I have lived and have yet to live. Memory makes me timeless and ageless. Where I am physically has little to do with the focus of my heart right now.
I want to give you new memories and remind you of ones we’ve already shared. Do not qualify which memories are good and which are bad. Fold yourself into me. Remember. And trust me.
My dad’s almond orchard, where I ran with our dogs as a child — sometimes empty-handed, sometimes with arms filled with books — is also where, just a few years later, on a cold December night, I lay on frozen ground and aborted feeling: I learned I was pregnant and wanted no one to know. Almond orchards, for me, are a memory of desolation, life, beauty and death.
Memory is an elusive thing. It can feel tenuous, fragile and dangerous. There are things we want to remember and things we don’t. There are moments tucked far away from our consciousness. And there are other memories we are unafraid to revisit. For all our good intentions, we forget, and we forget.
God, give us your memory. Help us to remember like you do.
I remember that my heart has always known God, and these are memories I am now discovering. As I consecrate my imagination to him, I see the two of us together in a space both unknown and familiar: before death, before breath, before heart beating, before his love put me on earth. My birth is outside of time because my Creator is outside of time.
I am desire.
I am testimony.
A daughter and her Father.
I am proof of love.
“His love, which is beyond our memory of life on earth, can shape and reshape our current memories, the ones we remember and the ones we would rather forget.”
The word for almond in Hebrew is shakeid, the root of which means to watch or to awaken. When God asks Jeremiah what he sees, he looks and says, “I see an almond branch.” I think about Jeremiah looking for what God wanted him to see, how Jeremiah did see and how what Jeremiah saw was something of such beauty.
Father, redeem our memories. Show us how to see.
And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” And I said, “I see an almond branch.” Then the Lord said to me, “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it” (Jeremiah 1: 11,12).
In this temporal space of living, we humans — and beloveds with souls dearly loved by God — can allow God’s memory of us to recalibrate us. His love, which is beyond our memory of life on earth, can shape and reshape our current memories, the ones we remember and the ones we would rather forget.
Lord, be our memory. You are the love within us; You are the compass who calls us home.
The Book
I will mark the place, soft-run my palm
flat on the cover’s surface,
faded blue linen, thick vanilla cream.
Black typed letters either singing or
whispering a landscape with feigned
beginning, middle and end. Like my life
when I turn it on its side, aching for the
most beautiful pages scented with pine
from Yosemite — and California almond blossoms
thick with bloom. Buzzing bees drink nectar
from gentle stems, and I am heavy with story,
use a single paragraph to describe the warmth of golden
sun on my skin, walk barefoot down
orchard rows of harvest, pick hot nuts off the ground.
Feel this shell, smooth and round in my hand.
I crack it open, popping tender sweetness in my mouth,
enjoy the fast-forwarding, this life,
pollination to birth to death, fortifying
the next sentence I am only beginning to read.
Jennifer Camp is a poet and listener who delights in investigating the deeper places of the heart. She founded Gather Ministries with her husband, Justin; is Editor-at-Large of Rapt, a multi-award-winning digital magazine; and manages Loop Collective, a community for women who pursue deeper connection with God. She also wrote Breathing Eden and The Uncovering, a collection of her poems.
