What is important to remember?
The names of your best friends from school? Family birthdays? Where you left your car keys? Memory experts suggest several ways which make it easier to recall important information. The same techniques can also be used to spectacular effect. Multiple times World Memory Championship winner Dominic O’Brien describes the spoken numbers challenge as one of the hardest memory disciplines. Competitors are read out strings of numbers at a rate of one a second. You have to listen to 400 of them and it’s sudden death. Most people can remember six or seven, but the current record is 364. 
Apart from the glory and acclaim given to these spectacular mental gymnasts, there is not a huge amount of real life application for recalling an hours worth of playing cards or 15 minutes of names and faces. But remembering is important
From the children’s rhymes that entreat us to ‘remember remember the 5th of November’ and Guy Fawkes attempted destruction of the houses of parliament, to Remembrance Sunday and the red poppies that recall of all those who have died at times of war, this month especially we remember the past because it has crucial things to say to the present.
Jesus himself gave his followers something to remember. On the night before he died, he shared the traditional Jewish passover meal with his friends. He took unleavened bread, he broke it and gave some to each of them. Then as the meal ended he passed round a cup of wine. 
‘This bread is my body, this wine is my blood. Every time you eat and drink these things, remember me’. We repeat these words of Jesus each time we share Holy Communion.
In among all the other things that we find difficult to find head space for, making time to recall the sacrifice of Jesus when his body was broken and his blood was shed, that’s really important.
(November 2015)