YMB #44 Catechism and Memory: A Conversation with Geoffrey ReiterPin
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What is a catechism and why is it important to teach to our children? In this episode of the podcast Dr. Geoffrey Reiter joins me to talk about how catechism and memory shape us along with some practical tips for implementing catechism memorization into our Morning Time.

It’s a fascinating conversation full of practical advice (including which catechisms to use) and things to ponder.

Pam: This is your morning basket, where we help you bring truth, goodness, and beauty to your homeschool day. Hi everyone. And welcome to episode 44 of the, your morning basket podcast. I’m Pam Barnhill, your host, and I’m so happy that you are joining me here today. Well, this is the final episode of this season of the year, morning basket podcast. Before we go on hiatus for Christmas, and I have to tell you, we saved a good one for last. This has been a fabulous season. I’ve been so fascinated by many of the conversations I’ve had. And this one is no exception. It had me thinking long past the time that the interview is over. So today we have Dr. Jeffrey rider and he is a literature professor, very close to my hometown, and he has a very fascinating take on catechism and memory.

And I wanted to share that with the listeners. I think you’re really going to enjoy this conversation today and we’ll get on with it right after this word from our sponsor. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by mere motherhood.com.

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and now on with Yes, Dr. Jeffrey Ryder is a professor of English literature and writing who holds degrees in both English and church history. He a special interest in the interaction between the Christian faith and literature, especially fantasy Saifai and Victorian literature as an editor and contributor to the online magazine Christ in pop culture. He also enjoys engaging and writing thoughtfully about contemporary culture.

From a Christian perspective, Jeffrey is the father of four and plays an active role in his kids’ education, especially in introducing them to great books, classic poems, and big ideas. He joins us on this episode to talk about catechism and how this tradition can enrich morning, time, and family life. Jeffrey, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me,

Dan. I’m really excited. Well, we are excited to have you here and I wanted to start off a few years ago. You gave a talk, a great talk at a homeschool conference that I attended. It was our local homeschool conference. And the idea that you talked about was the idea of catechism in CS. Lewis’s the silver chair, which is one of the Narnia books.

Can you talk to us a little bit, a quick summary of what that talk was about, because it was so fascinating On the subject of catechesis and particularly as it relates to what Lewis is doing in the silver chair. So the Silver Chair is one of the later Chronicles of Narnia. It was in the original ordering of the, so it was the fourth one it’s usually now publishes the sixth one,

but it comes a little bit later. And so it doesn’t have the dependency kids from the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, and some of the earlier ones, but one of their cousins used this and that his friend, Jill are both parts of this book and they end up in Narnia and there’s a scene very early on in it when Jill is having our first encounter with Aslan who’s the lie and who kind of represents Christ in the series in some ways.

And he gives her this set of instructions, these four signs that she’s supposed to remember before she goes on this mission into Narnia. And that I think as an adult, when I was reading that it really struck me in a way that maybe it hadn’t as, as a kid. And so I got to kind of thinking about the ways in which education in general was played out in the silver chair,

because if you read the book, it’s the beginning of the end of the silver chair, both are in a school, it starts, and it begins and ends in a school. And Lewis has some very harsh criticisms for how this particular school that they call experiment houses is set up. And so I kind of thought, well, it seems like he’s maybe contrasting views of education,

like his own perspective versus the one there. And the one that Jill has, it seems to be much more based on direct memorization of things, as I just tells her to remember these signs and the more I got to thinking about the language and, you know, I’m probably not the only person who’s real, who’s sort of seen this before, but it just resembled some passages actually in scripture.

And so I actually wanted to read this little passage here cause I just, I, I love it so much. And it’s the, it’s the section when Aslan, the lion is giving her the tasks to do. And he says to her kind of right before, she’s about to enter into the actual land of Narnia. He gives her these four signs that she’s supposed to do.

And then he says in the book, but first, remember, remember, remember the signs, save them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night and when you wake in the middle of the night and whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning here on the mountain.

I have spoken to clearly I will not often do so down in Narnia here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken take great care that it does not confuse your mind and the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look when you meet them there.

That is why it is so important to, to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs, nothing else matters. Hmm. So there’s definitely an emphasis here on remembering something and knowing it well. So later in life, when you get kind of out into the world and you’re caught up in situations that don’t,

you know, aren’t textbook situations, you’ll still remember those signs and be able to apply them to new situations. Am I getting that right? Yeah. And in fact, that’s not just a, that’s not just a Lewis concept. In fact, I think that he’s actually deliberately evoking a passage from scripture itself and talking about this since actually a fairly well-known when,

particularly from the Jewish background, this is a really significant passage. It’s in Deuteronomy chapter six, verses four through nine in particular. And, and, and in that one, I’m going to use the NIV for this one, but cause that’s the one that I’ve traditionally memorized from, but there’s different translations here. Oh, Israel, the Lord, our God,

the Lord is one, love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, these commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts, impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home. And when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up,

tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads, write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your Gates. I think you can kind of probably hear the ways in which as land’s language there in Lewis is kind of evoking and suggesting the language that came from Deuteronomy. So this is just not a passing knowledge of these things. This is a deep internal yeah.

Knowledge of these things. Kind of almost like an ownership of these ideas because you’ve pulled them into yourself and you, you have them. Yes. I, you know, I, I honestly, I think that’s a great way that you put it. There actually is of having, having ownership of it, having something that you can keep with you that can’t really be taken away,

you know, when, when the Bible was written and when you first had like passages, like Deuteronomy, it’s really on the transition between being an oral and a written culture. Remember those are the first written scriptures ever. And most people in the ancient world war literate. So if they were going to learn scripture and in many cases at all, it was going to have to be orally.

And they learned that by kind of like repeating and repeating it and getting it down. And in, you know, CS Lewis actually has a great little essay that nobody ever reads on the subject. It’s sort of, it’s called a, the Parthenon and the optative and it’s this really funky, it’s really short. It’s this really funky little essay where he basically argues,

you know, everybody likes big ideas. You know, everybody likes to talk about like the classics and all of these high-minded principles or, or in some cases like Bible knowledge or scripture. And he uses that as like the idea of the Parthenon, like the great temple that we all know the image of from ancient Greece, but then most people don’t want to do with like the really hard work of like going down and just actually like grinding out and memorizing it.

And he uses the case of, of in the Greek languages are particularly stubborn, little grammatical trick called the optative of which almost nobody, you know, everybody always kinda like struggles with, and he’s like saying, yeah, everybody loves the idea of a Parthenon, like these beautiful grand ideas, but then to actually really master them the way somebody like a Lewis himself would takes work.

It takes like this. Yeah. This idea of repeating and memorizing, but then once you, do you have it always like it is, it’s always with you. Nobody can take that away from you anymore. It’s actually part of you. Oh, wow. Okay. yeah, this is, we talk so much about memory and in homeschooling circles and we talk so much about,

you know, why spend time memorizing things. And so kind of this idea that you have to memorize it to own. It is I think something that a lot of people, you know, I think we kind of get caught up in the whole parlor trickery of memorization. We memorize something so we can, you know, look not even the, what’s the word I’m looking for so we can look intelligent or we can look smart or we can look clever,

that’s the word. So we can look clever because we’ve memorized these things, but really the act of memory goes so much deeper than looking clever, doesn’t it? Oh, sure. It does. And you know, that’s a really good point. You brought up too. So like I teach at a Baptist college. I, you know, I come from kind of an evangelical at low church Protestant tradition in general.

And so, you know, I think that one of the reasons that, you know, my particular group or, or TRIBE has often reacted against things like liturgies or catechesis is precisely this fear of being pretentious and being, yeah. Looking, doing things for the sake of looking clever, this idea that there’s this radical discord between the heart and the head.

And so, you know, like, yes, you can memorize these things, but are you just then going to be going through the motions? Do you somehow dim the vitality of something by memorizing it? And I, you know, I think that that’s a, perhaps a legitimate concern, like a real, a real thing that we need to watch out for as we go through.

And I hope, you know, as listeners as we’re going through this conversation, this podcast, I, you know, if there are things here that you’re wanting to implement, I think we all need to make sure that that isn’t what it’s becoming, because that could be a threat. We can all repeat things unthinkingly at times, but it can be more than that.

I, and I think that just because it can be abused in that way, doesn’t necessarily mean that we shouldn’t use it at all. And so, you know, the idea of catechesis, there’s a lot of different, even the name, right? It sounds kind of like fancy at highfalutin, but I’m going to use it. He’s a definition, actually,

you should appreciate this. This is actually from the, the Catholic catechism. It’s a quote taking on from John Paul Pope, John Paul, the second. But I think that this actually is an understanding of catechesis that can work for Protestants and Catholics, like or other traditions. Catechesis is an education in the faith of children, young people and adults, which includes, especially the teaching of Christian doctrine,

imparted, generally speaking in an organic and systematic way with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life. So I think that importance of what they say on the one hand of the organic nature of it being something that’s not just, you know, like rubbing people’s knuckles and making them memorize it, but also systematic is so that you’re learning the important elements in a way that becomes clear to the kids,

or it can’t be adults as well. We’re talking kids primarily here as they do it. That’s where we kind of tried to balance those things out because there are things we all want our, I mean, if we’re teaching our kids, there’s things we want them to know. Right. And so it doesn’t make sense to provide them that in a regular and systematic way,

but, but how we do that without making it stultifying, I guess, is the, I love this. I love, I love that definition and I love that or that organic and systematic jumped out at me as soon as you said it, because you know, it’s so often, and even in educational circles, we get into this, okay, well,

we’re going to teach writing and we’re going to let them be, and I’m just going to jump over to writing and kind of this analogy for a minute, we’re going to teach writing. We’re going to let them be creative. You know, we’re not going to make them write to any form. We’re just going to let them be creative. And they kind of,

when you do that with kids, you know, sometimes it can be quite overwhelming to them and they don’t know what to write. They don’t know where to start. They’re just staring at this blank page. And so you lose, there’s a place for teaching them the forms too. There’s a place for teaching them the systematic things too. And that, and it comes together and marries to make,

I think, a much stronger writer. So kind of the same thing with the faith where you have this one side that is organic and maybe it’s living the liturgy, you know, a love of Jesus, a personal relationship with him, things like that. But on the other side, you have this systematic memorizing of certain that when you marry the two together,

kind of make a more complete faith. So I like that organic and systematic as kind of being two sides of a single coin. Yeah. You know, I think the other thing is like having no discipline feels like freedom and a moment, and there is some freedom to that, right. If you can just go off and do it, you know,

whenever you want to or whatever. Okay. That’s fine. But you also, in a sense, if you have no discipline to be able to do things like memorization, there’s also a different kind of freedom that you’re kind of denying yourself. Once you’ve mastered something, then you have a whole nother ability or skill or knowledge that you can use and use freely that you didn’t have before.

And I think that this is an, I, I love to be able to quote this or tell you where I get this from, but this is just floating in my brain. And unfortunately I have apparently not done the discipline to remember it, but I feel like it’s maybe something from Lewis about the idea of like a great artist or maybe a piano player,

like who, you know, can, once they discipline themselves enough to really learn the music, then all of a sudden can have a lot more sort of freedom within it. But a good example I like to use from my own life is when I was younger, I used to read a story to my little brother. And his favorite was the Lorax by Dr.

Susan. I read it so many times. I mean, dozens and dozens and dozens of times. And so eventually I just, I memorized it. I memorized the whole, whole thing complete with all the voices that I used to use with it when I was doing with him. And now it’s so sunk into me. I can pick out from any point in that story and start telling it,

I can, I’ll do, like if we have like poetry readings on campus or something else, I’ll do that one. And I can like slightly change up how I do it in one sense or another, you know? And I, I suspect probably like somebody in theater or an on Broadway, who’s done a show multiple times probably has that freedom as well.

Like there, it’s a different kind of freedom. One that only comes from the mastery of something. And if you never discipline yourself enough to master, you never get to even experience what that’s like. And I think that’s certainly, I mean, if we’re growing in the faith, that should also be what our faith is like too, that we are mastering it in that sense that we get a richer freedom out of the boundaries of learning this material As somebody who has experienced your Lorax performance,

it’s there, you know, there’s a beauty to it. There’s, you know, it’s something you’ve internalized so much, you, it goes back to having ownership of it, you own that material. And so you’re able to do so much with it. And so it’s kind of like, you know, owning the tenants of your faith so much, you know,

that you’ve always got something to meditate on. You’ve always got something to go back to. You know, you have a basis, sometimes this is something I struggle with is, you know, kind of an apologetics or being able to evangelize, you know, you really have to know that and internalize those things then to be able to turn around and do the evangelization work that you’re supposed to be able to do as a Christian,

you can’t do that. You know, You can do it, but it’s not always going to be, you know, if we, we understand scripture well and dynamically and organically as well as systematically. Sure. Yes. Yes. And there’s, yeah, there’s always, I love the, I, is it St. Francis who said evangelize always and speak when necessary.

So, you know, there’s something I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have that one memorized. Yep. Yeah, we do speech isn’t necessarily something. Okay. Well, let’s talk just, you kind of touched on this a little bit, but let’s go back to exactly. And especially for those of our Christian brethren who might not come from a church where they practice catechesis or have a catechism,

what exactly is it and why have so many Christians throughout history practiced it? Sure. So, you know, again, we can go back to the definition from the Catholic one and let me maybe break it down just a little bit. So it’s education in the faith that we would usually use this in reference to education and in the faith. And it can be for all ages,

children, young people or adults, you know, people might come to faith at different periods of time. And we’re focusing of course, on the, on the children and young people, because this is for morning time in school environments and it’s Christian doctrine. So the thing is now I hope to talk a little bit more to also just about scripture generally,

and that should be important, but doctrine specifically kind of like the organized and coherent putting together of important teachings of the Christian Church, that is a key component to it. And, you know, you could read throughout all the Bible, but also having those boundaries by Christian orthodoxy are also important. And so having some something in place to prepare us or help us to be able to think through and understand what those boundaries are from an early age,

you know, will be helpful. And with the view toward this is the big picture that he ends it with a view toward initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life. So, so that’s the goal. I mean, that’s the goal for a lot of our listeners, I think is to that, that’s what we want initiating the, in this case,

the children into the fullness of Christian life and to do that in a way that makes it, it sinks down deep, like we were saying, but also is rich and beautiful as well and, and practical and practical, very practical. I think that that’s one of the nice things about it. It’s, you know, in Mary I’ll use it, it kind of combines their Mary’s high-minded ideals,

but also with the actual work and actual stuff that you can do. So the other thing is like, if we’re not doing it in, if we don’t have some kind of nice catechesis element in place, the trick can be, then we’re giving them doctrine or we’re giving them teaching or giving them the Christian faith, just kind of like randomly or in a more scattershot way.

And then we can’t be quite as certain that, that what’s actually what we want to stick is what’s actually sticking. And, you know, there’ve been techies, has it been a part of the Christian Church really kind of from almost the very beginning. I mean, you know, you can, I would maintain even those passages in Deuteronomy are referring to a,

kind of a catechetical approach in general, but there’s very early versions of Christian catechisms that we have some versions of. There’s an old document called the decay, which I was probably from around the second century, which is a version of this. And then we have some beautiful catechesis from a, a fourth century theologian named Cyril of Jerusalem that are also quite nice.

So it’s very old. And again, it’s old because it has been found so effective and there’s a lot in the Catholic tradition, but there’s also been many in the Protestant tradition as well, even ones that are Baptist, which for those coming from my own faith, angular or tradition could appreciate yes, even Baptist had their own catechisms at sometimes too. So it’s something because it’s like you said,

it’s effective, it’s practical, but also fulfills like real ideals of the Christian life as well. Okay. So, and, and I will say, you know, I wasn’t familiar with catechism until I actually entered into the Catholic church into the Catholic faith. And so this was not something that I particularly grew up with and any CA I’m only familiar with.

So, so therefore I’m caveating this with, I’m only familiar with the Catholic catechism, but it’s very scriptural. All of the things that are in there are based on a scripture in one way or the other. And I, I would probably hazard a guess that most catechisms are like that they’re all have a basis where if it States something in the catechism,

you can go back and find multiple verses, you know, to support that. And then we’re not going to get off into the tricky waters of capital T tradition in the Catholic church, but especially for the Protestant catechisms, I would hazard a guess that there’s some scriptural basis for all of the things that are outlined in the catechism. Yeah. Most versions of cat of the catechist different catechisms that I’ve seen will usually have either notes or parentheses or something that will include several different texts that illustrate the point that they’re talking about.

Some of them will become, will be coming directly from scripture. Others will be doctrine organized, but with, yeah, with the background in scripture that you can look it up to find out more about it. And, and, you know, I would think that hopefully any Christian entering into, or looking for a traditional catechism to work through would be able to see.

And most of the words, they’re just elements that ring true to them that they’re like, Oh yes, this is biblical. This is really does come from a scripture. That’s not just not just words of, I mean, it is words of men articulating truths that have been discerned and gleaned from scripture, like you were saying. Okay. So yeah.

I just wanted to stress that, you know, these are our, yeah. The nobody’s pulling this stuff out of them, I guess. Yeah. It’s scripted. If you, if you find a catechism that is doing that, then I would highly you be skeptical of it. Avoid that one. Okay. So now we have this kind of systematic laying out,

you know, and most you pointed out the systematic part again, most catechisms, you know, especially for young children, start with, you know, who is God and who am I? And you know, why am I here? They, they start, you know, you always have the classic joke of the man climbing the mountain to get to the wise guy on top and to have him,

you know, w what is the purpose of life? Well, you know, all he needed to do is go back and read this little catechism there, and it would tell him he didn’t have to climb the mountain. Yep. Yeah. And so the most, again, most catechisms that I’ve seen are, do kind of like structure themselves around that doctrines of God,

then eventually moving into more elaboration of Trinitarian theology Christ. And then of course, when you’re discussing Christ, then you get into the nature of at elements like incarnation is, you know, the atonement, the resurrection, these elements. And then of course, human interaction with that. What is the chief end of man to glorify God and enjoy him forever,

which is, comes from the Westminster catechism and various versions of that. And then eventually into elements of church life and the, what that participation looks like participation in the sacraments or the ordinances and the different traditions, understandings of those types of elements and how they fit in. And that way you can ensure that like, all your bases are covered, you know,

you don’t, I guess that’s the thing. Like we don’t have to start from scratch. We have these well thought out versions that have come beforehand, which are getting all, hopefully the important points we would want to pass on to our kids, by people who have sort of thought through the best ways to articulate them, and then to introduce them in such a way that our kids can learn them and we can learn them.

I mean, I’ve certainly benefited by working through catechesis with my own children and just getting a strengthening within myself of these ideas as well. Well, let’s be really Uber practical for just a few minutes. So if, give me a couple of names of catechisms, because you’re probably going to have a much wider familiarity with them than I am for different faith traditions.

Can you do that for me? Well, I pretty easy in your case, because you’ve got that the, the Catholic catechism that one’s pretty standardized, but there’s several different from a Protestant perspective. Some of the classic older ones are the Heidelberg and the Westminster Westminster, particularly among the reform tradition is very common. And, and one that we’ve done a little bit of that with our kids as well.

There’s a shorter and a longer version of it. There’s a Baptist one that some from around that time, and I think it’s kind of an adaptation of Westminster. It’s sometimes called the Baptist catechism or teaches catechism T E C H. There’s a few different names for it, for somebody who is looking for one that’s maybe a little bit more reason to more contemporary.

The thing about the older ones is if you’re getting, sometimes you ended up getting like an older translation of it. So you’ve got some language which isn’t necessarily a problem, and it can be very beautiful, but you may, especially working with kids, you might want something that’s more accessible and you can get contemporary translations of those. But one that I’ve liked and that we have gone through with our kids is it comes out of the pastor,

Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian church, it’s called the new city catechism. That one specifically has a 52 entries. So it’s designed for one year basically. And it has kind of like a bull, the kids and adult version, they get all what just comes out of the kids’ version. It just elaborates it a little bit more than the, than the kids when it does.

And I mean, any of these, you could, you could, I’m sure you could find in book four, but most of them are also, if not, all of them are available also online. And that’s just a starting point. I mean, obviously there’s, there’s like so many and I’d probably be overwhelmed myself if I was like looking through all of them,

but I suspect you could probably with some quick searching from whatever perspective you were coming from, to be able to find something that was, that fit in with the doctrinal elements and priorities you want it to look at. And if you found one that was, you know, not one of the ones that I was listing or talking about or not one of the well-known ones,

what do you do? Like look through the doctrine that’s actually being taught and just make sure, you know, is it something, is this the stuff that I want my kids and myself to know and to pass on? And then at that point you could, you know, just start working through it with them in some way. Let’s talk about what that looks like,

because we’re now we’re getting back to that memorization element. Because a lot of times when we’re talking about working through a catechism, we’re actually talking about memorizing portions. I know that, you know, we Catholics, we have the big red book and that’s the us catechism. It is not necessarily something you would memorize, but there are versions for children that you would memorize.

And so this is the kind of passing on that you’re talking about to our children, right? Yes. So, yeah, and the memorization is a key component. Usually most catechisms, especially the child oriented weds are designed in a question and answer format. So the adult might answer, I might ask a question and then the child will have a response or a kind of answer to work through that that works in that way.

So there’s already kind of an intrinsic interactive component to it, you know, so, and this is your morning basket. So we’re, you know, working on this in morning time, that’s a, on the one hand, a very natural place in many cases to work in this kind of element of the memorizing of it just have one that you’re working on.

It could be day by day, but you really, I mean, you want to pace yourself according to, you know, how well your kids memorize things naturally. So, you know, take, don’t be afraid to kind of take the time that it requires to, to learn them. I mean, you know, they’ve got, you got plenty of time,

so do what you, you know, you need to do in that level And they’re going to learn it faster than you are anyway. So, Oh, this is so true. I am a frequently embarrassed by how much more quickly my kids pick up on things than I do. And, and again, like memorization, it kind of, we can think of it as having a bad taste in our mouth because we’re thinking of memorization in that very cold and roadway,

but there’s ways that you can do this, that can make it more engaging, whether that’s just doing it with, I mean, it can be just like reading them more energetically. It can be coming up with creative ways to, to remember, or to memorize them. I mean, you’ve had, I think somebody on here earlier with like the memory palace technique,

and I know that we’ve used versions of that and memorizing things as well. And so that could be a strategy that you use, but just repetition in general. I mean, the thing is every, any human being who is participating in this kind of discussion, like we are actually probably better at memorizing than we realize. If you think about it every time you’re hearing a conversation with somebody or talking at all,

I mean, you had to memorize every one of the words that you’re working with to be able to talk at all, like language itself requires memorization. So we actually have all of our brains have a lot of stuff in them. So I think that we just adults are more willing to sell themselves short in what they’re able to do. I think kids are,

don’t have a lot of the self-imposed ideas. Oh, I just, I can’t remember that. I can’t remember that. And so they’re often, like you were saying more receptive or, or more able to get it done then than we are, which is great. So, but like I said before, it can also be very beneficial to the, the adults in the circle with the kids as well as we are learning those things.

Yeah. You know, it’s funny, I wonder that’s a very good question. How much of the adult kind of, I won’t say inability, but lack of fluidity in memorizing, how much of that comes from preconceived notions we have about our abilities and not our actual abilities. So, yeah. Right. And obviously there’s realities. I mean, different people do are able to memorize more or less elements,

but I think I agree that I think we, we made, I’m not trying to like stress people out. I just, I think that we actually are often capable of doing more than we anticipate or think that we can do. But also, I mean, say that you’re not like at a point for whatever reason, your morning time, isn’t like,

you’ve already, it’s already crowded with a lot of things. You want to get this stuff in there, but like this kind of like really hard memorization doesn’t work, even just like getting a quick familiarity with them, introducing them to the question, the answer, and maybe discussing it a little bit. You know, I mean, obviously again, as we’ve been talking about throughout this time,

there is an important element of just rote memorization, but you know, if you’re not quite at that point, like, you know, something is better than nothing. So just even introducing them, conceptually to them, if they don’t get it all down perfectly, you know, just having it somewhere rattling around in there can certainly be helpful. Okay. So that brings up two very important things.

First of all, I want to go back to the point you made that you have plenty of time. So this, you know, this is not a race, just take the time to memorize it. And I think you’re going to find that it, it does go quicker than what you think it might. And then you mentioned discussion kind in substitute for memorization,

but really even if we’re memorizing it, we should be having these discussions. It’s not just memorize and move to the next one without ever talking about what this means. Right? Yes. And thanks for bringing that up. Absolutely. I get one of the things I’ve been definitely trying to emphasize here is that, you know, khakis is, is ultimately failing.

If, if we get a lot of knowledge, you know, pressed them and then they just hate it because we’re like forcing it on them or, or if they learn it as in a, in a clever or prideful way to show off in Sunday school, but not to be embodied or lived out. And so absolutely any kind of memorization of anything should always be accompanied by discussion,

understanding, prayer, whatever the case may be to make sure that it is really it’s lived out in a, in an embodied as well as just discussed or talked about. And like you said, also like, don’t try, it should not be like it might be work, but it shouldn’t necessarily have to feel like a burden. I think one thing that happened one time when,

when we did, when we started doing the new city catechism, when we were working through it, it was great at the beginning. But what we did was each time we would add, do the question and answer, and then the second week, cause it was a 52 week with the second week, we would do questions one and two, and then we would do questions one,

two and three, you know, by the end of that, when we were having like, you know, all these questions, 10, 20, 30, 40 questions all at once. I mean, at that point, by the end, it kind of felt like we were just doing it to do it. And that kind of informed the way in the future when we tried other types of catechetical processes that we weren’t trying to hammer it home because I think we were starting to lose the,

lose the value of it, lose the point of it by making it something that was more of a chore than a discipline of a Christian life. That was also beautiful. So definitely keep those in mind. Now, another thing by the way, which you can do also is music. Certainly we have a great aptitude oftentimes to learn musical lyrics. And I know that for Westminster,

there’s several different CDs or, or albums or other things which take questions from them and set them to music. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Catholic catechism had some versions of that as well. And so those can be fun also if they’re, if they’re well done because the kids can respond to it in a way that, you know, it feels even less burdensome or less onerous,

if they’re able to hear it musically speaking. And if you don’t have them for the category, even, maybe even you can make up your own little tunes for it. There’s certainly no reason why that couldn’t be done. You know, just hearing you talk about this, this takes me back to that organic and systematic, that two sides of the coin.

And you’re talking about, you mentioned a couple of times living out the Christian faith. And so this makes me think back to the Lectio Divina conversation that I had with Ashley Wohlleben a couple of weeks ago. And I mean, there’s very much a place for kind of electio to practice of catechism. Isn’t there, where you come in and you get, you get the catechism material,

you get the question and answer, and then, you know, you discuss it there at the table. You have time to mull it over. So you’re, you’re learning it, you’re memorizing it. You’re going through this discussion process and then you go forth and have an opportunity to live it, you know, and if you don’t get to that last step,

if you don’t get to that honey making step that living at step, then you’re missing a big part of the process. That’s again, that is really the whole point of the process is to be able to live it out. And, you know, honestly, another aspect to this too, you know, I think on the one hand the morning time is a natural occasion when we can emphasize this type of memorization,

but to go back to the passage from the silver chair and what he was evoking in Deuteronomy, you know, another element of this is that a memorization, all the, even the whole catechetical or memorization process itself can be more than just a sitting down and doing it because there’s lots of other settings where we can be working on this. And that’s what a as land is talking about in the passage to Jill Wright.

He is, he’s like, you know, remember the signs in all of these different circumstances, you know, repeat them and say them to yourself. And the same thing is true. The Deuteronomy passage, you know, we may think it’s a little bit weird to talk about writing things on the doorframes of our houses or, or, you know, putting them on our foreheads or whatever.

But the point behind that really what, when Moses and delivering that address was trying to get to the Hebrew people is that this should be your life. Your life should be one just w that is surrounded by truth. That is surrounded by God’s elements and scripture. And, and, you know, that can be, you know, if you’re going on a,

on a walk with the kids or something just a little bit, I’m not saying again, that you turn every other occasion into just like this hardcore teaching experience, but you can do that a little bit. Honestly, one of the most, I’d say one of the most effective memory visitation times I’ve had, particularly with my second side is when we were potty training him.

And, you know, he would like me to do poetry with him. This wasn’t catechesis, but it was, it was memorization stuff. And we would just, although I did do some scripture, one sometimes with him with that too, because I mean, he’s just sitting there, he’s not doing anything else. Right? So it was, it’s part of our daily life part of our regular time,

but why not? You know, why not do it at that point is as much as anything else. And by seeing them, by having that memorization process, the lived out in our regular life and other ways, that also means that we are more likely to think of these truths as applying to our life, as in ways, other than just in the morning times.

So a child who’s got a child who sees this catechesis as something that inhabits all aspects of their life will also therefore be more likely to bring it out at times other than just this one selected time. Yeah. And so, you know, if you’re, if you’re doing this as you go along your day, then it, it does, it’s like prayer,

you know, if you’re only praying at certain time, you know, if you’re only praying before meals, then you know, the misconception or in church, it’s like, this is the only time you pray. But, you know, if you’re praying is you’re traveling down the road together, you know, just literally traveling down the road together in the van,

as a family, then, you know, it starts to permeate all aspects of life and they can see, you know, that it’s everywhere and not just contained in this one place, it becomes less of an academic subject and more of a thing that you’re living. So, yeah, definitely. All right. So what about parents who want to kind of dive deeper into this idea of why memorize catechism,

why do catechism with your kids? Do you have any resources for that? Sure. So there, I mean, there are several things that are written on it and, and again, honestly, like many of your readers are probably have the, probably have as much, if not more facility than I would to just do a good, you know, Google search and find a good site that would give some information on that my backgrounds or sources tend to be on the more academic side.

You know, I’m gonna recommend, first of all, one source, which actually really isn’t about catechesis is all, but I love it because it does kind of work at how our brains work and why khakis this might work for it. And it’s a very, it’s got a very weird title it’s called Proust and the squid. And I believe that subtitle is the story of science,

of the reading brain. And the author of it is actually just somebody who studies, how children learn to read and is particularly study children with dyslexia, but she spends a lot. She actually does mention Narnia specifically in it, I believe in Louis in it. But she’s looking at the ways in which how, what we do when we are using oral language or memory differs from how we use written language.

And so that gives some clue into how our brains work. And if somebody has incidentally, just a, a child struggling with some kind of dyslexia, it’s still like a whole section on that, which is great, but it also gets into kind of the ways in which oral and written language differ and why therefore internalizing things orally and through memorization can be helpful.

I think from a theological perspective, a writer who gets, who has some really good stuff going into how habits that it can include catechesis can really affect our practice is there’s a Christian philosopher named James K a Smith. His most famous is called desiring the kingdom, but he’s, he’s got a more recent one, which I think is maybe a little more accessible called you are what you love.

And it’s not just about catechesis, but that certainly plays into it. It also develops other things on liturgy. And there’s a, another Protestant perspective on it is from a writer named Carl Truman, the creedal imperative. He gets at some things in there as well. And again, for the parent, who’s looking for it. You know, I would also just say,

you know, look around, I don’t want to say, like, it sounds really bad to say, like shop for catechisms, but you know, certainly whatever perspective you’re coming from, you would want to make sure that you’re finding one that matches the particular aspects of Christian truth that your tradition might emphasize. And so, you know, just, there’s no substitute for just looking at the actual content of them yourself and making sure that that’s what you want them to learn,

because, you know, certainly I don’t want you to be teaching them something that would be contrary to your own understanding your own best understanding of what a scripture talks about.. Yeah. And you know, it’s funny, you’ve mentioned this a couple of times about the memorization and I keep the thought that keeps coming back to my head was something I heard once about when the Gutenberg invented the printing press,

there was kind of this general outcry. And I think I, you know, I read it in an article online or something, and they were comparing it to the current day outcry of electronic books versus print books. But there was kind of this general outcry of, Oh no, everybody’s going to be reading everything now and nobody is going to memorize anything anymore.

And that just keeps, for some reason that keeps coming back to me. And I don’t even know the validity of that statement if that was a true fear at that time or not, but it makes sense that it would be that you’ve lost something. If you can just nowadays, if you can just Google something, there’s no, you know, the argument is,

well, there’s no reason to know it because you can just Google it, but there’s almost like this, the same thing. If you can just read something, there’s no need to remember it because you can just pick up a book and read it, but there, you know, if you keep going back to that oral tradition, you keep alluding to it’s different,

isn’t it? It’s just different. Yeah. Well, and okay, so you bring up actually a couple of really good points. First of all, when, when you’re using oral language, my understanding is I’m known neurobiologist. My understanding is your brain actually is doing something different when it’s dealing with oral language versus written language. In fact, significantly different.

A written learning how to read is a lot harder than learning how to talk actually. And within the existing actually is a digital language is actually different from either of those. So when you’re reading something on a screen, your brain is actually not doing the same things as it’s doing when you’re reading something on a page. And that’s why it is kind of an ethical change or shift there.

Each one is different. Each one has its own merits and validity, but you’re doing something different each time. So, so I mean, you’re actually like if you’re reading a Bible on a screen based system, you’re actually, it’s literally not the same activity as if you’re reading it in the printed page, which is not the same activity as if you’re memorizing it.

And I think each one has its own section in the prison of the squid books. She gets at a really interesting point, going back even further than Gutenberg to Socrates, who, if you think philosophically back along, you had the kind of this, this set of teachers, right? You had soccer, Socrates, who’s a teacher to Plato and then Plato was a teacher to Aristotle later on.

But what the big difference was that Socrates was intentionally, always oral. He never wrote anything down. All we know about Socrates largely comes from Plato’s dialogues. And so Plato kind of wrote down versions of these dialogues. And they’re not necessarily word for word what Socrates said, but he’s, he’s writing them down. And how that represents in kind of Greek society,

kind of that transition from the dynamics of orality and speech, but also the dynamics of memorization there to this way. When you write things down on the one hand, you have access to all this all more, more information, but yeah, it’s not internalized as much. I think one of the big questions that any of us, and certainly that I convicting question for myself to ask me and others as well is,

you know, who are we when everything, when all our things are stripped away, like I’m an English teacher. So, but I have to ask myself, who am I when my books are stripped away? Like, if I didn’t have those anymore, if some, you know, something took them away from me or who are we, if our technology was stripped away of some massive IEPs,

pulse wiped out all of our technology, what is the left of us? You know, if like you were saying, if we didn’t learn, you know, how to do these things without the aid of technology or even without the aid of books, if we don’t so that if those things are taken away from us, what’s left of us. What’s left of us is what we have up in our,

our minds and our hearts. You know, the, the, the Hebrew word for heart, it does not just mean the emotional seed. It really refers to the will in general. That’s why, when Jesus quotes it in the new Testament, he actually quotes it as love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,

because mind is an in the old Testament version, except that it kind of is because the word for heart love is actually the word for heart and mind. The Hebrews didn’t really see a sharp distinction between the emotional and the intellectual. It was all integrated within them. So it’s love the Lord, your God, with all your heart mind. And that is ultimately,

you know, as, as Smith says, you know, we are what we love. So ultimately what we very deep within us, apart from all our accoutrements and all our external elements, that’s who we really are. And that’s what we want to be. And that’s, that’s what this kind of catechetical instruction is designed to shape in us. Oh,

I love that. Who are we when everything is stripped away? You know, even the books, I think there’s kind of this, we almost get caught up in this book, glorification in our society, certainly as homeschoolers and things. And there’s this massive book, glorification and memory has kind of been relegated to the parlor Trek category, but maybe we should start asking ourselves if our books were stripped away,

you know, what will we have left? And it’s what we have memorized. So, Oh yeah, that’s good. Besides catechism, then what do we impress upon our children? What things do we strive to remember as a family? And you’ve touched on that with the potty training poetry and things like that, but you know, what else besides catechism,

once we’re stripped away, what else are good things for us to have left? Yeah. Sh certainly of course the, I, those of us coming from any kind of Christian tradition, but it’ll obviously say scripture itself, first of all, into to its credit. I I’d say most avenues of the Christian Church that I been in, even the more kind of low church version,

but do emphasize scripture memory really well. And that’s good. I think what could be maybe sometimes strengthened is larger scale scripture memory, memory of, of longer passages so that we have more context for them, you know, whether that’s John three 16. Okay. But what about John three there? You know, so we see more about Jesus has conversation with Nicodemus,

which is terrific, or, you know, one that we worked with on our, with our kids for a lot is first Corinthians 13. It’s a beautiful passage. And also the Deuteronomy six passage that I, I was working through earlier. And we’re right now, we’re trying to look through the book of Philippians and very slowly and haltingly and gradually, but trying to do,

do the whole book of that. So scripture certainly, and scripture in, in, in context, you know, honestly at this point with some of the larger passage we’ve done, I couldn’t even necessarily tell you which chapter or verse each thing is is from. And, and maybe that’s a little bit of a problem cause it’s nice to be able to look it up,

but of course, chapters and verses weren’t part of the original scripture passages they were. And so sometimes that having a single verse can almost lend itself toward abstracting us from the larger context. But, but in the bigger sense, also just, you know, the things that promote goodness and truth and beauty poetry has always been something that we’ve worked on with our own kids.

Just getting them some examples of beautiful poetry. And I know that at co-op, that was also always an interest in the concern that we all had in, so that there was a nice sort of thoughtful use of, of language there buried in inside them that they can come out with a, to go back to tie this into something that you had mentioned like way back at the beginning,

in terms of the ownership question. I remember when I was, I briefly taught mostly I’ve been a college teacher, which I love, but I briefly taught middle and high school. And I remember one of the curious experiences I had teaching ninth grade or ninth grade English was there was a project we had to do where each student had to kind of come and memorize something and recite it.

And this may just be me, but in my experience, I found more than almost anybody else. I found young African-American women when they would memorize a poem or memorize a passage would when it came to recite would have more feeling, more emphasis, more depth of, of personal understanding of it than almost anybody else who did the project. And again, I think that goes back to that that was something now that they had,

you know, something that was like we were talking about could not be taken away from them. And so, yeah, just think about the things that we want to cultivate into our children, the words and the language and the beauty that we would seek for them. And again, not in a way that’s becomes too much of a chore task. It is work it’s it’s and it’s going to be,

and so you might have to push through some resistance at some times, but hopefully we can, if we are able to do so in a way that’s a joyous and in a way that communicates gratitude and love and grace, then it can go beyond that. It doesn’t have to be always that way it can be work, but it doesn’t always have to be labor or this intense unpleasant experience.

Yeah. And I would just reiterate something that I’ve said a number of times in that, you know, it’s a thing you’re doing with them. So, you know, if you’re picking up the book and, and this is a place where, you know, catechism, it gets a little trickier because it so many are written in that question and answer format,

but you know, making sure that they understand that your memorizing it too, it’s not, I’ve talked about this with poetry before, if you pick up the book and you say, okay, now tell me the poem. You know, then it, of course they’re going to be resentful, but if you pick up the book and you just say the poem,

they’re eventually going to learn it. There’s no need to quiz them and you’re going to learn it too. They’re going to learn it faster. But you know, if you don’t make it this thing where you’re quizzing them all the time, it’s, this is something we’re doing together as a family. And so making sure they understand, especially with that question and the answer catechism format that you’re learning it too.

So sometimes let them be the one to ask the question. That’s a really good, I like that idea. Actually. I think that that works out well. And you can recite the answers along with them too, even if you are the one asking the question. So Yeah, very much so. Very much so. And there’s, there’s virtue in hard work and there’s virtue in learning that there’s virtue in hard work.

So, you know, having some fun with it and then pressing on, I think can work, but certainly being a co-learner and coming alongside is a big one. Well, Jeffrey, thank you so much for joining me today. It was a fascinating conversation and I really appreciate it. Well, it’s been my delight to be here. Thank you so much.

Ma’am You have it. Now, if you would like links to any of the books, Jeffrey and I spoke about today on the podcast, you can find them on the show notes for this episode@pambarnhill.com forward slash Y M B 44, and they will be waiting for you there also on the show notes, our instructions to help you leave a rating or review for the podcast on iTunes.

We love it when you do that, because it helps us get the word out about the podcast to new listeners. And like I said, in the intro, this is the final episode of your morning basket or 2017, never fear. We will be back in January with a, another great lineup of guests. And we’ll see you on the flip side,

you guys have a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year. And until we do keep seeking truth, goodness and beauty in your homeschool day,.

Links and Resources from Today’s Show

Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward SanctificationPinMere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward SanctificationThe Silver ChairPinThe Silver ChairThe Lion, the Witch and the WardrobePinThe Lion, the Witch and the WardrobeThe Chronicles of Narnia Box Set: Full-Color Collector's EditionPinThe Chronicles of Narnia Box Set: Full-Color Collector’s EditionCyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical LecturesPinCyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical LecturesThe LoraxPinThe LoraxProust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain of WolfPinProust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain of WolfDesiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Cultural Liturgies)PinDesiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Cultural Liturgies)You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of HabitPinYou Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of HabitThe Creedal ImperativePinThe Creedal Imperative

 

Key Ideas about Catechism and Memory

  • What you memorize becomes a part of you and no one can take it away from you. When you know the material well, or have it memorized, you take ownership of it and are able to rely on that knowledge throughout your life.
  • Catechisms are designed to systematically present the faith in a way that the reader can come to understand the fullness of their churchs’ teachings. But, more importantly, catechesis should include understanding of ideas and a living out of those ideas.

Find What you Want to Hear

  • 2:50 meet Geoffrey Reiter
  • 3:42 Catechism in the Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
  • 10:20 the purpose of memorization
  • 18:20 why catechisms are important
  • 21:55 the structure of catechisms
  • 28:02 using a catechism to teach the faith
  • 32:20 more than memorization
  • 39:25 catechism resources
  • 42:10 differences between reading and memorizing
  • 47:10 other things to memorize as a family
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