Mega Memory Month 2011 Final Celebration

Mega Memory Month January 2011

Final Celebration

It’s the last day of the month, January 31st, and Mega Memory Month comes to a close.Let’s share our projects, our progress, our successes…no matter how much or how little you were able to absorb. Seriously, every word is progress. Link up your posts via Simply Linked or create something to publish on the Facebook Event page for Mega Memory Month (write comments on the wall).Ann’s ProgressSo…this wasn’t my best Mega Memory Month, to say the least.Memorizing has rarely come easily, but this time I was extra sluggish. Also, I tried a new technique—starting at the end instead of the beginning—and I’m not 100 percent sure it was the best approach for me.My goal was to memorize John 15. I couldn’t put it all together, however, so I’m disappointed with myself.But I will begin at John 15, verse 15.And the only way I will be able to present this is to go over it beforehand and then when I am kinda-sorta ready, I’ll type it out. I will require prompting along the way, marking the spots where I needed a prompt like this {prompt} and missed material inserted in pink.

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I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. {prompt} You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then my the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. {prompt} They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me. If I had not come and spoken these words to them, they would not be guilty of sin: Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin.{prompt} He who hates me hates my Father as well. If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles and yet they have hated both me and my Father. But this is to fulfill what is written in their law:  They hated me without reason.When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also will must testify about me for you have been with me from the beginning.

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I can get bits and pieces toward the beginning. Starting with 15:1:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it might be even more fruitful. {prompt} You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.

[blank brain…skip to verse 5]

I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

[blank brain]This section was a mess at verse 12: “My command is this: love one another each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you love one another do what I command.”It’s like puzzle pieces are floating around in my cranium, waiting to be placed correctly. I can say some of the remaining/missing phrases independently: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.” And “I have told you this that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”Now I just have to stick them all together in the right order.Is it an “epic fail,” as my teen daughters would say?Yes.I did not finish well, as I set out to do on January 1.But I have my 3×5 cards and will continue. I will. Because failures, even “epic fails,” show us where we can pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off, and continue forward, making progress. We fall down; we get up.Also, Mega Memory Month can serve to kick-start the habit of memorization. I plan to continue on a small scale and will build in regular review, revisiting John 15 until I get it all straightened out. I hope you share that vision of continuing with less mega and more reasonable everyday effort throughout the months to come.My concluding thought for this Mega Memory Month project is this:Our brains can hold more than they think they can (but maybe not quite as much as we wish they could).