Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0479: Memorize Ruth

Episode Date: January 7, 2016

Kina wants to memorize the book of Ruth. I present tactics and several mnemonics for memorizing the key verses, and I introduce some online resources that include mnemonics for the entire book. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 479. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Kina mentioned in an email that she's interested in memorizing the Book of Ruth. Now, this is an interesting situation because, although I haven't said much about this on the podcast yet, we actually do have a course in the work on memorizing Ruth. And even though we've talked about releasing our Philippians course and perhaps our Galatians course before the Ruth course,

the fact is that the Ruth course is further along than any of our other courses. And so we may be able to get it released pretty soon, or at least a lot of the materials for memorizing the Book of Ruth, with the key verses and the mnemonics and everything, just not necessarily the images yet. But all that's just to say that we do have some pretty thorough things in the work for this, and I'll go over some of that in this episode. So the first step of this project will be to think of the four chapters in different places in a memory palace. Now, the one that we've chosen is a basic house. So we have a bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, and then an outdoors. It's just four chapters, and so it's pretty easy. Now, one new thing that

I'm doing with all of my scripture memory is I'm adding environments to the different places. So for the first chapter, the bedroom is dark. You want it to be pretty much pitch black. Then the second room, the kitchen, is very bright. The sun is shining in the window. Then we have a drafty and cold living room. And so, you know, the defining characteristic of the living room, environmentally, is the fact that there's cold air blowing through it for some reason. And then outdoors, it's raining. And that's just to represent the chapter four, you know, it's always raining for the er in the major system. Step two, once you've associated those four numbers with those four locations, is to create references for the key verses. So the key verses are basically three or four verses from each of these

chapters that represent the main topic being addressed. So in the first chapter, the first topic is sort of an introduction to Naomi and her family, including Ruth, and the verse that we've chosen to represent this is just the first verse of the chapter. Now, so chapter one, verse one means we need chapter one. We need to be in the bedroom, in the first location in the bedroom. And then my object for the number one representing the verse is a dish of acid. Now, I don't necessarily want you to remember the verse at this point. All you really have to do is remember the acid in the room and then you kind of have that as a reference point there. It's kind of a bookmark and we'll remember the verse at this point. All you really have to do is remember the acid in the room, and then you kind of have that as a reference point there. It's kind of a bookmark, and we'll come back to that later. The second thing in the bedroom, in the dark bedroom, is going to be a

tissue for verse 16, which is our key verse for the section where Ruth chooses to follow Naomi rather than go back to her mainland, or to stay in Moab. So she's staying with Naomi, and the key verse there is the Kleenex. Now, don't necessarily remember the topic at this point. Just remember that we have a dish of acid and then a Kleenex in this dark room in a different place. And then the third thing in this room is an onion, which will relate to Naomi and Ruth's return to Bethlehem. All right, the second chapter is in the kitchen. Our first object is a semi-truck, which is my object for the number three. So that represents that we're in, you know, the kitchen for chapter two and then the semi for verse three.

And that's going to be our key verse for the section where Ruth meets Boaz, verse three. After the semi-truck in the kitchen, I would suggest having a tuna can somewhere further along in the kitchen. And then finally having a noose for the number 20. So our main verses in chapter 2 are 3, 12, and 20. In the drafty and windy living room, our key verses are 4, 9, and 17. So the object for the verse 4 is a sari, and then the object for verse 9 is a bar of soap, and then for 17, a twig. So just place those throughout the room as your bookmarks for the verses that we'll learn in order to memorize

chapter 3 or the key points of chapter 3. Finally, we'll go outside in the rain, and our main points there are a sage for verse 6, a pair of dice for verse 10, a tire for verse 14, and an onion for verse 22. For people who are new to memory palaces, all of this may seem weird and might not seem to have anything to do with the Book of Ruth, but if you can think of this as a sort of exercise, if you can remember where those objects are in those four rooms, or I should say in those three rooms and outside, and you can just mentally walk through this house and see where those things are, then you can memorize the Book of Ruth, just by adding information to this basic memory palace of, well, currently bookmarks for the verses we're going to memorize. In any case, the next step in the entire project, after just remembering those bookmarks of things, is to memorize the verses attached to those key verse objects.

So we're going to do one per chapter in this episode because we don't really have time to do all of them, but I'll just do this as sort of a sample. So Ruth 1.1 says, In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. That's a long verse, but I would say that the main key words of this verse are judges, and then the famine, and then we have Bethlehem in Judah, and then we have woman and two children, or wife and two sons. So what we're going to do is we're going to try to turn those words into visuals that we can relate to this dish of acid in the bedroom. So I might just imagine waking up in bed, hearing a

strange noise, trying to move some judge's wigs. So really visualize this, you know, we're turning the word judges into some judge's wigs to relate to the judges or the days of the judges. And then we have being burnt by the acid and seeing that there are some tiny little Lego people in this room. And that includes a woman and two children that are trying to mow the carpet. So the mowing of the carpet represents the word Moab. So if you can remember those judges' wigs, that dish of acid, the little Lego people who are starving in the tiny town, the woman and two children, and mowing the carpet,

then you can just quiz yourself on these key words, and you can, you know, say this verse a couple of times, and it'll all come back to you. In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. So you see that what we're doing is we're just taking the main words that we're trying to memorize here, and we're turning them into visuals that we can place in our palace along with these bookmarks. The next one we'll do is the first key verse from chapter 2, which is verse 3, and we've related that to a semi-truck. So imagine that we're in the kitchen, let's say that we're where the

teapot belongs, and the object is a semi-truck. So somebody, let's see, the verse is, so she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who is of the clan of Elimelech. Now, we have to turn all of that into visual stuff related to this place in the kitchen and this semi-truck. So imagine going to get some tea and holding a semi above the teapot, and then out of the teapot come a bunch of little Lego people with tools for harvesting grain. And they're all falling out of the semi-truck into the teapot. And inside the teapot, there's a field and they meet another Lego guy inside the teapot who has a bow and arrow. And that guy is Boaz. So the stressed syllable of the name Boaz is bow,

and so just remember that he's the guy with the bow and arrow, and you should remember the name Boaz. Those are just kind of some ideas that you might use to visualize the key words of the verse that are going on, and then you can remember the entire verse by saying it a couple of times with these key words in mind. So obviously what we're picturing here is not the events of the book. We're picturing a sort of index that we're using to help us, to help prompt us to remember the events that are happening in the book, even though it's just some story or set of images of somebody going around a house with a semi-truck and a sage leaf and a pair of dice.

Our next example is from chapter 3, verse 9, and the verse is, he said, who are you? And she answered, I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer. Now you just want to find some way to relate that in the drafty living room to a bar of soap with the main key words that are going on here, including who, spread wings, servant, and redeem. So I'd probably use an owl for the who and the spreading of the wings, and then relate that to the bar of soap, and then find some way to relate that to servant and redeem. So it'll take a little bit of work and creativity, but it can be done. And then you'll obviously have that reference and that verse in the location that it goes in. You can always remember that chapter 3, verse 9 is, Who are you? I'm Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your

servant for your redeemer. Finally, we have chapter 4, verse 10. So we're out in the rain with the pair of dice, and you want to relate that to the verse, also Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place, your witnesses this day. That's a lot of key words that you'll have to reduce this down to, but if you can do that, relate those key words to the dice out in the rain in some particular place in the yard. You have this verse, and you have basically a structure of the entire book of Ruth if you do that and the other key verses that we've mentioned in this episode. Now, obviously, there's a long way to go from just the things that I

presented in this episode. It'll take quite a bit of work and a lot of creativity and probably even some visual images to make sure that this stuff registers well and is stored well in your, you know, very visual memory, which is our strongest memory. So for everyone listening, Kina and everyone who's interested in scripture memorization, go to masterofmemory.com slash give to accelerate our learning projects for scripture memory. We release all of our courses for free, but it is quite a bit of an investment to get any of them created. So you can accelerate the way that we create the Philippians course, the Ruth course, and all of the other things that we have in store just by contributing at masterofmemory.com slash give. Meanwhile, what do you

want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question and I'll talk to you again soon.