From an article on memorizing poetry:
Memorized poems are a sort of larder, laid up against the hungers of an extended period of solitude… The best argument for verse memorization may be that it provides us with knowledge of a qualitatively and physiologically different variety: you take the poem inside you, into your brain chemistry if not your blood, and you know it at a deeper, bodily level than if you simply read it off a screen.
I think the same logic applies to memorizing other things, like scripture. It is in your brain and in your blood.
..The spiritual teacher who helped me through the early days of recovery asked (his) readers not to memorize by rote any words in his book(s). He advised not to read his book(s) as you would a novel,but to skim through it,notice an insight,then move on to the next, making no attempt to commit them to memory. His theory was that anything you needed to know would be called to your remembrance by the Holy Spirit within.He taught that our Conscience,awakened by the Holy Spirit, was to be our surest compass/guide. He said: “Conscience is a silent knowing.The truth rarely speaks to you with words, but is like a light that illumines the darkness and shows you plainly the nature of things. It is a wordless knowing.It goes beyond words and reveals the nature of words.” …My memorization of scripture is chiefly used to feed the Theologically argumentative evangelical spirit that possessed me years ago…
Have you ever watched a rock climber climbing an artificial rock wall? They make their way up, handholds becoming footholds and so on as they inch toward the top. I think words committed to memory are like those handholds; they give you something to hang onto as you climb in the life of the Spirit.
…Thats GOOD!,Chris