"Calling to Mind"...

“It was then I called to mind something I remembered from last job.”

I’m not sure what the person said in the next couple sentences after that statement in our conversation, I was hung up on the idea of “calling things to mind”.  I wondered who first worded it this way and what made them do so.  

It feels different to me than simply remembering.  Calling things to mind seems more about venturing out and retrieving.  Yelling into the woods, calling out for your meandering kids to come home for dinner. Going and looking for a box stored away in the attic and finding the decorations for Christmas.  It feels like a statement that implies certain ideas or thoughts don’t just “come to mind”…they are “called to mind”.  They don’t simply show up, they are summoned.

It’s easy to get caught in that blank stare.  To feel like a piece of drift wood floating wherever the current happens to be carrying you. To find yourself lost in the thought or caught in a feedback loop of inner dialogue; worse yet, feeling attacked with invasive thoughts having their way with you.  I’m not sure this is the time to hope things “come to mind” pulling you out of the trance or tendency.  

But to “call to mind” seems more active to me.  More engaged in looking for language and waving in some “thought friends” to join the conversation and weigh in on the conversations and conclusions that are happening moment to moment.  To realize that we have this power to beckon our better angels and reckon with their influence on our current mental state is something potent to consider.  

Just something that “occurred to me” this morning.  Something that “came to mind” that made me wonder if things don’t have to just “occur to me” all the time. Maybe I have to occur to life along the way instead of abdicating that agency.

Now that I think of it, there is a verse with this very line in it that precedes probably one of the most popular passages of Scripture in the Bible…

“I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.  I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I CALL TO MIND and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him.” – Lamentations 3:19-24

“Yet I will call this to mind”…

“I will say to myself”…

How much do we forfeit because we don’t exercise these extraordinary human faculties? How much do we suffer?  How much life is lost?  How much success is just one little step away?  It gets one thinking.