Angel in Liturgy
Special to United Methodist Insight | July 2, 2025
Here’s a knock-knock joke for control freaks:
“Knock knock… You’re supposed to say ‘who’s there?’” says the control freak.
We already know about control freaks. And we already know about knock-knock jokes. The comic surprise is putting two commonplace things together in an unusual way.
Comedy is about totally routine, predictable things. Like the behavior of teenagers when they are with their parents in the presence of their teenaged peers. They forget their parents are listening, and say stuff to their peers they’d never say if they were alone with their parents. Like the things people are doing but not talking about when they are talking on their smart phones… things that would surely be highly embarrassing. Three-quarters of what makes comedians funny is the fact that everybody knows exactly what they are talking about. There’s no mystery in their subject matter. Most of what they are doing is shining a spotlight of attention on the most dull, normal, everyday stuff that we barely notice, and making connections between them.
Most of comedy is about un-forgetting things. And much of Christianity is about un-forgetting things, too.
Jim Burklo Ident 2023
The Eastern Orthodox Christians have a part of their mass that is called the “anamnesis” – a biblical Greek word. Amnesia is forgetting, and anamnesis is un-forgetting. The anamnesis the part of the Orthodox ritual in which the people un-forget the story of the death and resurrection of the Christ, and of the final Passover meal Jesus shared with his disciples. Anamnesis is a more engaged, intentional practice than mere remembering. Often we can easily remember things that we really have not forgotten at all. Anamnesis - un-forgetting - requires active effort to bring up to consciousness that which has become less accessible to our present awareness.
If we go within, and go deep enough, we begin to realize that the whole world of spiritual wisdom and knowledge isn’t something that we lack, that must be poured into us like water into an empty jug. All of it is already there, within us. Spiritual work is not about learning what we don’t yet know; it’s about un-forgetting what we already know most deeply. It’s not about putting something into us that we don’t yet have. It’s about removing the barriers and the blocks and the burdens that get in the way of lifting up what is already within.
We already know that love is all that really matters, but oh how easy it is to forget that and make a very big deal about everything else. We don’t have to be taught to love; we just need to un-forget it. Small children know that love is all that really matters, because this wisdom is planted in their souls at birth. We sometimes trick ourselves into presuming that the reason they love so purely is that they don’t know enough about how hard the world is. On the contrary, they know love as well as any of the rest of us will ever know it. They just haven’t forgotten it yet.
We already know that forgiveness is what is required to gain the peace and harmony we crave so very much. That knowledge is embedded in our souls already. We just need to un-forget forgiveness. We already know that making sure that the most vulnerable people are lovingly cared-for trumps our quest for possessions and power. We just need to un-forget compassion, at both a personal and social level. We already know what we are here on this earth to do.
We forgetful adults are called into anamnesis - to un-forget that Ultimate Reality loves us completely and totally, and that we are moved to return that love to all beings in the cosmos.