Greetings gentle readers after a long lapse in posting.
I was recently contacted in e-mail by a Christian polyglot some of my readers will know personally from Gatherings, Brother Fiel Sahir, who wrote:
Hi David! I did some googling but maybe I messed up and I haven’t found where you’ve discussed this, but have you further developed the GLM for scripture memorization? I know for a fact that you were goldlisting sentences when I met you, but what I recall was you used those sentences to help you remember a focus word rather than the sentence itself. Just something interesting, because a friend of mine has encouraged me to begin memorizing scripture. A spiritual discipline that is definitely underated and under practiced in my opinion, first and foremost by myself. Anyways, I look forward to your response, but a blogpost would be more beneficial to the world, so I await that as well! Thanks David. I hope to see you around soon!
In response to this, I wrote the following:
Dear Br. Fiel,
Anything which is to be learned to the Long Term Memory can best be learned using GLM. My suggestion would be to select a passage which you would like to be able to repeat verbatim, at any time later in you life, and place it into the headlist with let us say no more than five words per line.
- The Lord is my shepherd
- I shall not want. He
- Maketh me to lie down in
- Green pastures, he leadeth me
- Beside the quiet waters. He
- Restoreth my soul…
Etc.
When you have left this two weeks as with any other GoldList project, if it is a passage you already substantially knew, but are trying to get word perfect I would try to write it on D1 position as accurately as possible, but in pencil, covering the original over on the left side. Here you can write maybe seven words at a time. Then note any mistakes you made, in the little words, bits missed out altogether, punctuation, if that’s something you want to get right too, verse numbers (which I didn’t include in the example, but if you ant to be able to remember them, then pay attention to that) and highlight those errors with a red pen or highlighter. Your 25 lines will now anyway be 17 lines just by dint of writing 7 words instead of 5 at D1.
Obviously that’s not a strategy that can continue indefinitely, so at D2 you will take a slightly different approach. You will probably not try to write out the whole from memory at D2, but instead write out the parts where you had had a problem before. The bits where you had no problem, just write the first letter of each word. Write tightly, allowing as many words per line as is comfortable.
Remember you are leaving at least two weeks again between D1 and D2, and the same when you turn D2 to D3, but here you can simply leave out and not even write the first letter of words if you know that you remember confidently the whole sentence. In order to remember the flow of idea in a longer passage, consider writing the first and last words in each clause, and maybe with abbreviations.
- The Lord..want, he maketh..gpast,he leadeth beside tqw. Restoreth.
That may well be where you are by D3 or D4, with 6 lines now looking like a single line.
And you can carry on that way. So, please let me know how you get on. And since you asked for a blogpost, I will base one on your query and my answer. Can I use your name and text?
To which Fiel responded that I could. And thanks to his query and willingness to let me share, we have here something which I hope will encourage many of you to try a project of GLM for long term memorization of a holy text.
Even if you are not Bible believing, you can probably try it on the Qur’aan or on some poetry you want to rote learn for life. I recommend Scripture though. It is what David said needed to be “hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee”, and if this tool can help towards the hiding of Divine words in the heart, I don’t know what higher thing can be said of the GoldList Method.
One reason that there is so little Scripture memorization in our time is the proliferation of translations and versions since 1881. In many English speaking countries memorization of Scripture was a standard method of teaching reading. The vocal beauty and resonance of the Authorized 1611 version led to an ease of memorization and the books of poetry were especially committed to heart and mind. The 119th Psalm was a standard for everyone since it was an acrostic, alphabetic arrangement for easy order of memorization. The 1611 Authorized version, the King James, will always be the approved English version.
I agree fully with your thoughts on this matter, and you said it very well. I can easily understand how the accretion of so many different versions undermines motivation of those readers who woud like to “hide the word in their hearts”, as the psalmist puts it. Another thing that will be held to the accounts of those who wantonly add to the confusion, unwittingly assisting the adversary by their endeavours of publishing needless additional versions.