A Sunday Rumination II

Though I was elated beyond measure with my new skill at memorization, which continued apace through the summer of 1971, I knew I also had to do more "rapid learning" if I was going to internalize the contents of the Bible during that summer. As it was, of course, it took me more than a year to do that, though I did eventually do well enough to get the highest score ever recorded on the (Presbyterian) Bible Content Exam when I was studying for the ministry five years later.

In the evenings and weekends, then, I worked through large chunks of the Bible. At my side were three books: Peake's one volume Commentary on the Bible, G. Campbell Morgan's overview of the Bible, chapter by chapter, and various books by F.B. Meyer on (mostly) Old Testament characters. I would take one longish book of the Bible per week (such as Genesis), and then immerse myself in the narrative with the help of my resources. I took copious notes, making sure I had the general flow of the narrative, and taking time to learn where the story breaks were. I was not satified until I knew the precise verses where the story broke or where an incident occurred. But, I was not simply interested in learning Biblical content. My frequent use of Morgan and Meyer attested to my desire to squeeze all the religious content out of the Bible that I could. I was like a spiritual dipsomaniac, trying to slake an unquenchable thirst for divine truth.

Christmas 1972

I was considerably disappointed when I had to return to college in the Fall. I felt that my regular course of study (I was still a pure mathematics major--I won those kind of awards in high school and thought that that was what a Long studied when he went to college--though I would soon change my major to religious studies) simply would not interest me, or that it would call upon the same level of interest I had in mastering the words and concepts of the Bible as my private study forced me to do. Once I switched my major to religious studies, however, I kept at the normal course of study for a year. Then during Christmas 1972, I decided to spend the week before Christmas (Brown had let out about Dec. 15) in the undergraduate library at Stanford, just three miles from my home, so I coulud try to master as much as I could of the Jewish historian Josephus and the ancient Jewish philosopher Philo. My professor at Brown, Horst R. Moehring, under whom I would eventually write my dissertation, was a Josephus/Philo scholar, and I decided that I would do the same thing with them as I did with the Scripture. I well recall spending the entire days of the first week of my Christmas vacation poring over the Antiquities of the Jews and various philosophical works of Philo. Though I didn't attack these with the same alacrity and intensity as I did the Biblical text, I learned enough in these five days to satisfy him for the remainder of my academic career that I had a firm foundation in these figures.

Summer 1973

I was still working on the Scriptures, and still looking to my own curriculum as superior to the Brown Univ. curriculum, when I came to the summer after my Junior Year. I hit upon another plan, however, to internalize more and more of the Scriptural text. I decided to conscript my younger brother Chris, who was 13 at the time, and have him read the entire Psalter (150 Psalms) onto several tapes for me. This took Chris many hours to do, but he didn't complain. I don't think I even paid him to do it. Nevertheless, once I had the tapes made, I would not only be able to study the Bible every waking moment, but I would begin to play the tapes when I went to bed at night. I would listen to every nuance that Chris would speak, run the tapes over and over again, and begin seriously to memorize the Psalter. I knew that it was "working" when several months later, back in Rhode Island, I was awakened from a sound sleep by violent cracks of thunder outside my window and found myself instinctively reciting Ps. 29: "The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon..." Along with my memorization of the Scripture text, I began to memorize hymns, sometimes multiple verses of hymns, so that I would never need a hymnal to sing in the future. Well, such were my commitments before I ended up graduating from college. Though I earned a degree with honors in religious studies, I was most proud of my own secret curriculum.

I could say many more things about my memorization/learning practices developed in my youth, but I will close this essay with some thoughts about today.

Moving to Today

Though I took a 30-year hiatus from this style of learning because I thought that in order to be successful in life you had to follow what others thought you should do, I returned to the kind of intense focus on mastery, this time through writing, when I set up this web page. I recall the great anticipation I felt in Spring 2004, after I had learned web technology but before I had the chance to post many essays, for the end of the semester to come. I would be a "free man" on April 16, 2004, with four solid months to do nothing but study, write and began to paint my life on the broad canvas of the web page more than I ever was able to do previously. I thought at first that I might write 200 or 300 essays, if I had enough to say, but as you see, I am at 2200 and still going strong 2 1/2 years later. Indeed, as I look forward to my final day of teaching on November 21, 2006 (I will finish my stint as a professor of law in December), I do so with the same kind of longing for freedom that I had in 2004 and, for that matter, in 1971. I do not know where it will lead me, but I know that the same young man in 1971, who looked at the text as a gift from God, now looks at words, and Shakespeare and many, many things with this same kind of focused eagerness, ready to see how it can be learned and then simply expressed to others. That is my love and my longing.

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