In a different post, we ventured into the elusive realm of memory. As they say, in for a penny, in for a pound, so shall we take another stab at it? This time, we turn our attention to long-term memory, which serves different purposes such as retaining the Biblical knowledge that constitutes the bulk of our interpretation.
Compared to the cut-throat demand for working memory during live interpretation, long-term memory affords us a luxuriously long time to get around to it. On the flip side, it can take a considerable effort to retain information for good and its process can get tedious and boring unless we do something about it. So let’s!
Mnemonics
By far my favorite. When it works, it works like cement. Let’s say we have a group of things we need to remember. A typical mnemonic device creates a meaningful and memorable sentence using words that share the same initial letters as these things.
Here’s an example: in the New Testament we have four letters from Paul written to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. On the surface, they are not a memorable bunch, but years ago I heard this mnemonic that really made them stick: Giants Eat Peas and Carrots. How adorable! Simultaneously, it encourages me to finish my veggies so, two birds.
Subsequently, I tried it with the seven churches in Revelation: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. What I came up with is: Every Single Plane Today Stays Pretty Late. Not the best, but it actually works for me quite well.
Of course, mnemonics have their limits. A mnemonic works best when the sentence is memorable and simple, and that takes time and effort on its own. In addition, we still need to have some basic idea of what we want to memorize. It’s not like anyone has an innate association between “today” and “Thyatira”. Lastly, things tend to fall apart when the number of items to remember grows too large. In those cases, it takes Shakespearan creativity to even come up with a mnemonic, which may just be yet another hard thing to remember.
Exhibit A: the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I knew it would be a fool’s errand but still attempted to make a mnemonic for it. Sadly I couldn’t move an inch beyond “Lord Jesus Please Protect Kids’ Good Friends Going South”. Sheesh. But don’t fall on your sword yet, because we still have more tools up our sleeves.
Colors
If memory is a chore then we need all the help we can get. Using visual aid is a great multidimensional way to memorize things. If mnemonic doesn’t work for the fruit of the Spirit, perhaps we can “lend color” to them. To see what I mean, it is best to view this example in the newsletter, since the blog template I use doesn’t support colored fonts.
Now, these black-and-white letters begin to take on distinct characteristics. Your brain is having a much easier time distinguishing and organizing them into your long-term memory. We begin with colors on the rainbow and add additional popular colors when we need more.
Each color assignment also has a varying degree of association. Red for love makes a lot of sense, but cyan for self-control is honestly a left-over deal. And to let you in on a little brown secret, patience is tied to poopy diapers. Again, assigning colors doesn’t automatically stick them on our memory board, but it certainly turns brute-force memorization into a slightly methodical craft.
Stories
There are situations where these two methods don’t work that well, such as the Twelve Disciples. I mean, what color is James? (Don’t answer that.) And which James? That’s when stories come to the rescue. Imagine this with me:
“After Jesus was baptized, He found Peter fishing on a boat. On the other end is none other than his brother, Andrew! And you probably heard about PJJ, which is short for Peter, James, and John. Lo and behold, both James and John were also fishing on the boat next to Peter. After they took off with Jesus, they saw a big lineup of people trying to pay their taxes, and who else was there but Matthew the tax collector? In the lineup, Andrew and Peter also saw Philip who grew up with them in the same town. Philip turned to invite his friend Nathanael, but he didn’t care much about Jesus. Jesus had to call him out with a miracle before he gladly joined the team. Just around the corner, they found a rebel called Simon who was sneaking around trying to overthrow the Roman government. Then, another James volunteered to join the team but unfortunately, he was called James the Less because he came later. Bummer! Now Thomas wanted to join this group but was slightly skeptical. It wasn’t until Jesus allowed him to touch his pierced hands that he became a giant of faith. Lastly, we all know Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus, but there’s another Judas on the team who really didn’t want to be confused with that guy so he changed his name to Thaddaeus.”
There you have it, the Twelve. That story was only loosely based on the actual Biblical account, and certainly not a comment on the disciples’ qualities, but the point is to stitch one coherent story that brings everyone together. Because they are the great disciples of Jesus (minus one of the Judas’s), it feels wrong to take too much liberty in the story-making process. Otherwise, the wilder the story gets, the easier it is to remember.
Since we are talking about the Twelve, what the story couldn’t capture was that many of them have multiple names. I mean, you can’t have everything. Peter was originally called Simon, or Cephas in Aramaic. Nathanael was known as Bartholomew in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew has another name, Levi. And the other Judas is better known as Thaddaeus because you know why.
Shorthands
We face yet another challenge when the information size becomes too large to handle with any of the above tactics, say… all the Book titles of the Bible. One way to make this process less of a Herculean labor is to employ shorthand. The first Bible I read was in Chinese, which conveniently contained the 1-word shorthands for all the Books. I thought it would be fun to organize them into a sonnet of sorts, which incidentally made them much easier to remember.
Here goes the Old Testament:
創出利民申 書士得撒撒
王王代代拉 尼斯伯詩箴
傳歌賽耶哀 結但何珥摩
俄拿彌鴻哈 番該 亞瑪
And the New Testament:
太可路約徒羅林
林加弗腓西帖帖
提提多門來雅彼
彼約約 約猶啟
I know, I know, there’s already a song for it, but frankly, I find the song harder to remember for me. So, to each his own! Regrettably, I haven’t found a similar tactic for English shorthand yet. Perhaps one of you can let me know yours so I can share it with the rest of the folks.
As you can tell…
All the above methods use some form of association between seemingly random things and our existing knowledge and senses. It’s like hanging new paintings on the walls of memory with nails or screws. I’m sure there are many more methods out there, some of which may have helped you pass med school, law school, or other endeavors you undertake. There is no reason why they can’t be applied to our services to God.
Serve smarter. Serve happier.
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash