By heart; the deeper way of knowing

Just recently, I have started to memorise chapter one of John's gospel, perhaps I might go further. Now why should I do this? Well there are a number of reasons, and as I was thinking about that question, having just gone over what I have committed to memory so far while walking back from Durham this morning, it seemed to me that it might be helpful to write down my reflections on the exercise and perhaps encourage others to give it a go too.



One of the biggest reasons for doing it comes out of the experience of acting. The last few times I have been involved in learning lines, I have been more aware of some of the dynamics of the experience of learning words by heart. One of the things that happens is that I employ several strategies to help me to learn. Apart from association [ie repetition which associates words and phrases together so that they become a string with one word in context cuing the next] remembrance is aided by noticing patterns of words, phrases or meanings [or combinations of these], by gaining and having a clear idea of the overall meaning and direction of the narrative or argument and noting how the passage fits into that.



And that brings me to the big reason why I reckon it is worth doing: those things that I have noted aid recollection are also about gaining a better sense of what a passage means and so the act of memorisation is simultaneously a deeper entry into understanding and is a kind of contemplative act or meditation which helps a fuller appropriation of the message.



As I reflect on that insight, I can't help but put it together with the culture and technology of reading and print. When movable type started to bring relatively cheap books to people, there were those who lamented the death of learning and scholarship which hitherto had relied heavily on the memorisation of key texts. I think that perhaps those laments came out of a sense of the deeper understanding that could be gained from memorisation and so printing was seen as the harbinger of a dumbing down process in education. Cost is not an inconsiderable aspect of this; we are used to having a Bible that is whole and complete and cheap enough to have as a kind of reference book and that is because it is relatively cheap. Before Caxton, books were very expensive as a result of the labour intensive means of production. This means that for most people, to have scriptures was to commit individual books to memory when you had access to a book and to listen in such a way as to recall later [the disciplines of learning by heart can change the way we attend to things; the patterns we notice and so on]. This meant a closer and deeper acquaintance with particular books and passages involving pattern recognition and associations with personal life events in ways that do not generally happen now. Certainly I have noted all sorts of things about the first few verses of the Gospel of John that simply did not really strike me until I started to learn it by heart. Perhaps I might share some of them on this blog ....



Crosswalk.com - John 1