This article explores the interrelationship between memory and tradition in the work of religious education with particular attention to three questions: how memory serves the construction of the personal narrative called self and orients the self to the future; how body memory as articulated in habit and ritual becomes the foundation for social memory; and how the memory of suffering offers a generative metaphor for postmodern life. It concludes that the memory of suffering as practiced in religious education and worship is required for "more true" selves and communities and for transformative praxis.