Three Reasons I've Gone Back to Rote Memorization

When I was a child, my sisters and I participated in a Bible memory club that gave kids prizes for memorizing Scripture. My husband's father used to pay him a dollar for every verse he memorized. Needless to say, we are highly motivated. But as he and I grew up, went to college and seminary, married, started a family, and moved to the missionfield, we left that practice behind. We still loved and studied the Bible, but somehow Scripture memory fell off our radar. 

When I read The Count of Monte Cristo many years ago, something began to stir in my heart. In one of the early chapters in the book, Dantés is in prison and feels like he is about to go mad. Then he meets Abbé Faria who tells him that at a certain point in his life he read and re-read the great classics and stored much of them away in his memory. Hence, his mind was constantly having meaningful dialogue with all the ideas he had stored away in his brain. I was intrigued by that! (The complete post is here.) I began to hope that "someday" I might have the time to do the same thing.

Then, about ten years ago, I read an article about how cell phones and the internet were robbing us of our ability to remember things. Phone numbers, addresses and other information were automatically stored for us on our devices. There were even apps for managing your passwords. With a click of a button you could access any Bible verse by typing in a few key words into your search engine. No need to try to remember anything! This was my second prompt to dive into action. 

The final step toward putting these thoughts into practice came when I stumbled upon Andrew Wilson's book An Approach to Extended  Memorization of Scripture, which clinched my resolve. (I've written an entire blog post about my journey here.) 

  

I've been at it for ten years now and I've memorized some wonderful Scripture verses, hymn lyrics and classic poetry. Sometimes my 65 year old brain doesn't cooperate and it takes me a whole month to get a short Bible passage down pat. (I've discovered that a chunk of twelve verses is my limit.) Poetry comes more easily because of its cadences, but whether it's Scripture, prose or poetry, constant review has been a necessity. 

Do you know what has surprised me most? How much fun it is! (I always get a warm glow when I recite Wentworth's letter to Anne from Persuasion.) and it's gratifying to always have something "nutritious" in my brain to think about. It's like having a secret chocolate stash that I can raid anytime that I have a quiet moment. It also keeps me from doomscrolling while waiting for a doctor's appointment or while standing in a long line. I just whip out the list of memorization projects that I keep in my wallet and start working my way through it. 

The purpose of the post is not to brag as much as it is to encourage you to give memorization a try. You might be surprised at how fulfilling it is. And your brain will thank you!

Blessings,

Anthony Esolen on the Importance of Memorizing Poetry

Although I am not a Catholic, I am a fan of Anthony Esolen's insightful articles in Crisis Magazine. I recently discovered his more lighthearted weekly newsletter “Word and Song,” which is dedicated to the promotion and preservation of truth, goodness and beauty. Three times a week he writes out his thoughts on various poems, songs or movies. 

He began a recent post with this verse from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat:

A book of VERSES underneath the bough,

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou

Beside me singing in the wilderness –

That wilderness were paradise enow!

He then goes on to elaborate on the meaning of the word “verses” and how poetry and song have been an integral part of previous civilizations because they were the best way to hide the stories & poetry & truths in one’s heart. He regrets that our present generation “no longer has the VERSES in our soul.”

He adds, “People nowadays often scoff at this sort of thing, calling it “rote memorization,” but that misses the heart of the matter entirely.  You can’t really “own” a song unless you hear it sung and you can sing it yourself, and poetry is essentially song.  When you commit a poem to heart, when you get the VERSES within you, you must engage your imagination; you see and hear things that make the VERSES fully present; you exert your voice, and you hear your voice; your body moves, and the movements have meaning; all kinds of memories, actions, emotions, thoughts, and feelings come into play and involve themselves with the poem.” (from Oct 24, 2022)

I highly recommend this brief and delightful newsletter.  

Blessings

100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Learn by Heart by Robert J. Morgan

I have seen 100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Learn offered on Amazon and have wondered if it was worth getting. I was glad to finally find a copy to help me decide.

I would highly recommend this book to those who are new to Scripture memory. Morgan has preached his way through each passage and does a wonderful job of explaining the importance of each carefully selected verse. The intro includes inspirational stories of many whose lives had been transformed by hiding God's Word in their hearts. I especially enjoyed the story of Vietnam P.O.W. Howard Rutledge as shared in his bio, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Bible verses literally kept him from losing his mind. The memorized snippets of Scripture in his brain were potent. They faced down death, rallied his spirits, steeled his nerves, and tapped into the deepest strength known in the universe. They beat back the torture, stifled the despair, and subdued the terrors he felt. Those verses were the reason he came home alive. (p. 20)

After forty-seven pages of introduction, Morgan devotes 200 pages to the verses themselves. The book is more than just a list of important verses. In the main section, Morgan carefully shows how each suggested verse builds on the previous, giving a thorough explanation of the implications of each passage This is essential to Morgan's emphasis that memorization is not just about words remembered, but about truths absorbed. If "Wisdom is seeing life from God’s point of view,” then Scripture memory is a good way to saturate our thinking with God’s way of thinking.

First you have the verse and then the verse has you. (p. 44)

Although Morgan includes a few tips on memorization techniques, the best book I've found on the subject has been An Approach to Extended Memorization of Scripture by Andrew M. Davis. I have used his simple method (slightly modified) for the last two years with great success.

Blessings,

An Approach to Extended Memorization of Scripture by Andrew M. Davis

Who knew that this 30 page booklet would cause a quiet revolution in my life? For years I've been wanting to memorize poems and larger chunks of scripture, but the busyness of life kept me from taking steps to actually do so. Some books I read on memorization (featuring mnemonics where each word is an outlandish mind picture) didn't appeal to me because that system robbed the literary pieces of their beauty. Enter Andrew M. Davis. In his book An Approach to Extended Memorization of Scripture, he gives tips for perseverance rather than mind tricks. With his system you choose a passage and decide how many days it will take to memorize it. (I chose Psalm 103 and scheduled in five minutes a day for 30 days.) You begin the first day reciting the first verse 20 times. The second day you recite it ten times and then add the next verse. So simple! I admit I hit a wall by verse 16 (of 22) so I spent an extra week on those initial verses before going on to the final ones. I'm still a bit shaky with the last six verses but I'm in phase two of the passage, which is to say the whole thing out loud for the next 20 days. I'm confident I will have it well in hand by the end of the month. Like a good meal, a good workout, or a good book, Bible memorization leaves you feeling fortified, energized and satisfied. I knew it would be work, but I didn't realize how rewarding it would be.  By the way, I've tried memorization before by placing a poem on my Kindle cover or in my purse to look at in off moments, but making the piece to be memorized a five-minute part of my daily devotions has made all the difference in going from haphazardness to consistency. Footnote #1 (added in 2021) - Davis recommends not trying to review old passages but I found this video on YouTube that helped me to retain all the projects if I'm willing to pace myself. It has worked very well. Footnote #2: For my own personal records I'm listing my completed projects.   2016: God's Grandeur, Ps 103, Salmo 23 2017: Land of Storybooks by RLS, Phil 3:7-21, "string passage" from Jane Eyre, Daffodils, Luke 2:1-12 2018: Intro to Tuck Everlasting, When I Was One-and-Twenty, JW's prayer for New Year, At the Seaside by RLS, Psalm 1, Jabberwocky, Luke 2:13-20, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (first half) 2019: João 15:1-8, 'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (2nd half) 2020: Review of all the above, Colossians 1:9-20 2022: Psalm 121, "Minha Terra Tem Palmeiras," From a Railway Carriage by RLS 2023: On His Blindness, "The Lord's My Shepherd" (hymn), Psalm 91 2024: Sea Fever by Masefield,  Psalm 4, Prefatory Sonnet by Wordsworth, The Tyger by Blake 2025: Easter Hymn by Vaughn, Psalm 127:1-2, The Eagle by Tennyson, Wentworth's letter (part one) 2026: Wentworth's letter (part two), Psalm 37:1-13, The Moon's the North Wind's Cookie

E-Books vs. Physical Boooks - Part Two

Tim Challies links to an interesting article by Drake Baer on how your memory works and on the disadvantages of remembering what you read on a screen vs. what you read on paper.  I've heard this before, but was glad to have it explained more clearly.

Baer's post also links to an article in the Scientific American which states:

Even so, evidence from laboratory experiments, polls and consumer reports indicates that modern screens and e-readers fail to adequately recreate certain tactile experiences of reading on paper that many people miss and, more importantly, prevent people from navigating long texts in an intuitive and satisifying way. In turn, such navigational difficulties may subtly inhibit reading comprehension. Compared with paper, screens may also drain more of our mental resources while we are reading and make it a little harder to remember what we read when we are done. A parallel line of research focuses on people's attitutudes toward different kinds of media. Whether they realize it or not, many people approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than the one they bring to paper.

Friends, I love my Kindle, but I have to agree with these articles; I know that I'm retaining much less from my e-books than from my physical books. 

Some previous thoughts on this subject were shared on my blog here.

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The subtitle of this book is “The Science of Remembering Everything” and I was hoping it would give me tips on how to memorize poetry and scripture.  It turned out to be the story of a journalist who spent a year training to participate in the U. S. Memory Championship, an Olympics-style event for mental athletes. The book is more memoir than training manual. 

So why am I recommending Moonwalking with Einstein? Because if you are mildly interested in the history of language or of education, you’ll find this book fascinating.  Have you ever wondered why the Bible was originally written down without punctuation?  Foer explains that early manuscripts were transcribed by men who had memorized their contents.  The words were not separated by spaces or punctuation because they were not meant to be read for understanding.  They were to be skimmed to remind the reader of what he already knew.

Since sight-reading scriptio continua was difficult, reciting a text aloud with fluency required a reader to have a degree of familiarity with it. . . . He had to prepare with it, punctuate it in his mind, memorize it - in part, if not in full – because turning a string of sounds into meaning was not something you could do easily on the fly.  The text had to be learned before it could be performed. (p. 224)

Interestingly, when the Bible was later published with chapter divisions and punctuation (and soon after with concordances), it assumed that the reader would be able to access certain passages WITHOUT having memorized them previously. We gained accessibility at the loss of total absorption.

As books became easier and easier to consult, the imperative to hold their contents in memory became less and less relevant, and the very notion of what it meant to be erudite began to evolve from possessing information internally to knowing where to find information in the labyrinthine world of external memory. (p. 231)

Now we put a premium on reading quickly and widely, and that breeds a kind of superficiality in our reading, and in what we seek to get out of books. . . .[Yet] if something is going to be made memorable, it has to be dwelled upon, repeated. (p. 233)

People used to read intensively.  They had only a few books – the Bible, an almanac, a devotional work or two – and they read they over and over again, usually aloud and in groups, so that a narrow range of traditional literature became deeply impressed on their consciousness.  (p. 234) But now with the profusion of printed material, they read extensively, and with very little retention.

Although, Moonwalking with Einstein did not meet my need for memorization tips, it did encourage me to pursue my goal of more focused concentration on poetic and biblical passages.