Presented at the 2017 National Conference in Austin, TX.

Like our physical life, all of our mental life – learning, skills, and memory – is subject to our natural frailty, and after a brief life disappears like smoke as does the memory of our existence among our descendants. Even our attempts at preserving the remains of Old Western Culture in the growing darkness are subject to the vagaries of a fallen world. Nothing lasts; Mutability appears to win. But the Christian tradition speaks clearly about our hope for real Permanence, and has left us wonderful examples in literature and liturgy to remind us that it is God’s Eternal Memory that matters.