Spirituality: Sponging The Stone

SCROOGE'S MEMORY IS DEAD

To begin with, Scrooge's memory is dead. The legacy of the Ghost of Christmas Past is the heart-felt transformation of memory. That Scrooge attempted to repress his recollection of the past, especially the feelings of his past, is revealed by his reception of the first spectre. The coming of this first ghost is accompanied by theophany, a light, emanating from the head of the ghost, that Scrooge wants to repress. Scrooge prefers darkness to the light. Scrooge begs that the light of memory be taken away. The Ghost chides him. "'What!' he exclaimed, 'would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give?'"

Blacking Factory

With memory uncapped, Scrooge is taken back to his youth where his pain, loneliness, and joy are recounted. Through early friendships, celebrations, and a jilted love affair, Scrooge meets his inner child, who becomes an emblem of every child. The Ghost of Christmas Past reminds him of his own misery as a rejected little boy placed in a boarding home by a father who was as callous as Ebenezer had become. When the pain of his past has its full impact on his paralysed heart, Ebenezer sees the plight of other maligned children whom he formerly considered pestering waifs.

Memory, not moralism, is the motive for Scrooge's charitable impulses. Scrooge responds to the vision: "'I wish', he muttered, putting his hands in his pockets, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff... 'There was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door last night. I would like to have given him something that's all.'"

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To sponge away the writing on our memory-repressed souls requires that our callousness be challenged by recollection in league with imagination. The way the Ghost guides Scrooge through his past seems to parallel creative journalling methods that invite reflection on our personal "roads not taken". The Carol implies that Scrooge's present insensitivity is the result of stifling the memory of his own early suffering and his experience of simple human joys. Memory wounds and heals our frozen hearts.

The words of a holocaust memorial echo the Ghost's lesson: "To remember is the beginning of redemption." Remembering is an act of vulnerability and courage. Scrooge is a prisoner of his immediate experience. His memory leads him to a new identity in continuity with the better parts of his past. Stifling our memories, hardening our hearts to the past, engraves judgement on ourselves.

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