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A Commencement Address

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Earlier this year, I had the delight of offering a commencement address to the graduating class of Our Lady of Walsingham Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. As the fall semester draws to a close, I thought I would share it with you along with some pictures of the event. It was a fun day and so encouraging to see young people launch out into life not knowing what is ahead. I did my best to give them a pep talk. I’ll let you judge the results of that effort in writing.

Commencement Address
Our Lady of Walsingham Academy
Mark Giszczak
May 24, 2025

It is a joy for me to be with all of you today for this celebration. I wish to thank your Headmaster, Andrew Rossi, for inviting me to come. And I want to thank all of you clergy, teachers, parents, guests and friends for supporting our esteemed and worthy graduates to whom I will address my brief remarks.

One day, the second President of the United States, John Adams, was walking down the street when all of a sudden he heard something unexpected—except he had heard the same sound before from the same house: a voice, singing. Intrigued by this unlikely sound, he went looking for the singer. And what did he find? A man, a shoemaker, busy at his work, happily singing as he pounded nails into soles, cut leather and went about his business. The man had a wife and many children, all living together in a single room. Adams asked him if it was difficult making a living and he said, “Sometimes.” But as soon as he had ordered a pair of shoes and left, Adams said “I had scarcely got out the door before he began to sing again like a nightingale.” But Adams reflected later: “Which was the greatest philosopher? Epictetus or this shoemaker?” The great Stoic was fond of saying, “He who is not happy with little will never be happy with much.” Another way he put it when asked “who is the rich man?” Epictetus offered: “He who is content.”

In other words, that poor singing shoemaker was the man that we should all aspire to be. He found a way to overcome adversity—yes, with hard work—but with more than that, by the outlook he adopted, the way he chose to be content and cheerful in spite of his circumstances. Just as St. Paul says, “there is great gain in godliness with contentment” (1 Tim 6:6 ESV).

Me and Mr. Rossi in the procession for the graduation ceremony

Now there’s a balance to strike here. We don’t want to become so content that we stand still and do nothing, that we never set goals, work hard to achieve them and wend our way forward. Be we should never become so dissatisfied with the circumstances of our journey that we lose sight of the fact that it is a journey, to become so discontent with the way things are that we become malcontents, holding the present circumstances in contempt because they don’t live up to our expectations. The reality is we make our circumstances. Yes, there are plenty of things outside our control—those are the things we shouldn’t worry about precisely because we cannot control them. But, there are also plenty of things within our control—things that we can change, and those are the things to focus on. What we want is to set our sights high, aim for the best, and not begrudge the uncomfortable parts of the trail to get where we want to go. They are part of the process. Success is not free. It is not easy. Life requires something of us.

But the trouble is, we don’t know what it will require when we set out. The only thing certain is uncertainty. The future is always foggy. We feel blind because we are. We are working and hoping and planning and looking, but rarely are we collecting lots of  trophies and hauling in bags of money. No, the way is hard. It is not clear. We do not get a blueprint. Yes, the Lord has a calling on your life, but he doesn’t give you a script. You have to make up your part as it goes along. And besides, he is the Lord of uncertainty: “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58 ESV). If you want to follow Jesus, you are following a homeless man who died by execution. It was precisely in his self-sacrifice, his self-abnegation, that he taught us the deepest lesson of love: my life is not about me, it’s about you. Your life is not about you, it’s about everyone else. The only way to find yourself is to give yourself. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13 KJV). He was the omnipotent Lord of the Universe, but he adopted the humblest possible position in the whole universe: to die as a falsely accused criminal on a cross. He sacrificed everything for us. He taught us what love looks like. He emptied himself, poured himself out for the sake of love.

Mr. Rossi speaking (you can see me sitting in front of the podium)

And that’s thing – thinking will only get you so far. Reading, analyzing, studying, even arguing are all just warmups, precursors to when the rubber hits the road. Action is required. You have to actually do something—to speak those lines, to walk across the stage, to launch out on a career, to open a business, to start climbing at the first rung of the ladder. Hard work is required. It is a first step, a prerequisite, a sine qua non, a necessary condition of success. Yet hard work will not get you all the way. You must be driven by something deeper than desire, deeper than greed or ambition. You must be driven by what drove our Lord—love. Love of God, love of self, love of neighbor. You cannot lay down your life out of love for others if you do not love yourself. You cannot “love others as yourself” if you do not love yourself. We cultivate love of God in prayer. We cultivate love of others in selfless service. We cultivate a healthy and appropriate and necessary love of self by developing habits of virtue: of temperance, prudence, justice and fortitude. You can’t control others, but you can control yourself—only by means of virtue. Those who lack self-control will not climb this mountain. They will not succeed.

The Stoics had a saying for this as well: mens sana in corpore sano—a sound mind in a sound body. Sleep, exercise and healthy eating habits are the foundation of physical health. Physical health is foundation of mental health. Mental health is the foundation of spiritual health. If we do not treat our bodies with care and respect, giving them the nourishment and exercise they require, we will be plagued by dysregulated internal systems, distracted by doctor visits, unable to focus on developing our lives because we are stuck in a state of acedia—unable to cope with life, spiritually sick. Sadly, so many in our generation are stuck—depression, anxiety, substance-abuse, loneliness. But that’s no way to live. There is more to life than complaining about how tough it is. The path ahead is hard—of course it is! That’s not something to sit down and mope about, but it is a chance for us to summon our courage, to press on despite the difficulties, to embrace the challenge and allow it to shape us into the men and women we were meant to be.

Peroration – Quo Vadis?

So this day is a signpost, a landmark, a moment to pause and reflect on everything that has happened before setting out on the new journey ahead. As your time here fades into memory and new paths open before you, I hope that you will take courage that you have been well prepared for the road ahead.

The proud graduating class of Our Lady of Walsingham Academy (and I’m on the far left in the back row)

As we press on into that uncertain future, we should begin with the end in mind. That happy, singing shoemaker, gives us an image of the path. He has not arrived, but he is on the journey. The journey is joyful even when it is hard. It is beautiful because it is ours: the one life, the one brief story that we get to live, the gift that we receive by the very living of it.

Thinking about this journey of life brings me back to that legend about St. Peter fleeing Rome in the midst of a persecution. Along the way out of the city, the Lord appears to him and simply asks him, “Quo vadis? Where are you going?” Peter understood what was implied. He stuck his walking staff in the ground right there and went back into the city to die a glorious martyr’s death. But that question still lingers for us: where are you going? It is a question that can only be answered fully in hindsight, but now, we can get a glimpse, a hint of an answer in conversation with the Lord, seeking his call on our lives, trying to hear his voice inviting us down a certain path, and eventually responding with loving obedience. As we take one step, and then another, the path will become clear, the way will open up. And we can say yes to what the future holds. He has promised to be there with us, “…even to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

So, there you have it. I gave a commencement address! It was great to be there with these young people at such a milestone. Who knows where they will end up, but I hope they all find themselves on great paths through life!

What is the Sin of Curiosity?

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I have always been curious (pun intended) about sins that take place only in the mind. It is very strange to think that a violation of God’s command could happen within your neurons. In other contexts, I’ve discussed before the interior nature of the sin of coveting and the interior sin of lust and whether it needs a purpose clause or not. Of course, “to covet” and “to lust” are very similar sins that have external objects of desire. What about a more purely intellectual kind of sin where the object of the mind is not external but internal? Can a mind sin by desiring knowledge?

The Short Answer

The short answer is “yes.” Curiosity  about forbidden knowledge–e.g. knowledge of witchcraft or knowledge of what it feels like to commit a horrendous crime–leads the mind astray, and left unchecked can prompt a person to descend into sin. Not all knowledge is innocent. Seeking out forbidden knowledge is a sinful pattern, where the intellect is not being used for its intended purpose (to contemplate God), but rather is indulging in its own self-interested designs.

Wait, But Isn’t Curiosity a Good Thing?

It’s hard to find books that warn about curiosity. Typically, in our apathetic age, teachers, pastors and leaders encourage people to stop scrolling their social feeds and “get curious” about important and interesting topics. This kind of intellectual inquiry is not just harmless; it’s actually essential to our intellectual development. If we are not interested in things that matter, then we won’t bother learning about them and if we don’t learn about them, we will be less than we could have been. So some curiosity is a good thing, it’s true. We want to be intellectually interested in learning about the truth.

Some Definitions

The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not spend much time on this, but allows that the Gospels were not written to satisfy human curiosity (CCC 514, 548), warns us against “unhealthy curiosity” about the future (CCC 2115), but it does not say much about the sin of curiosity. Fr. Jordan Aumann’s Spiritual Theology warns of “vain curiosity” and also “Morbid curiosity. This is characteristic of those who eagerly seek out the esoteric aspects of mystical phenomena or have a fascination for the occult or preternatural.” Even Tanqueray doesn’t talk about it much. St. Bernard of Clairvaux says that curiosity is the “first step of pride,” defining it as “when the eyes and the other senses attend to what is not one’s concern.” St. Thomas goes even deeper on this point and teaches that:

For the knowledge of truth, strictly speaking, is good, but it may be evil accidentally, by reason of some result, either because one takes pride in knowing the truth, according to 1 Corinthians 8:1, “Knowledge puffeth up,” or because one uses the knowledge of truth in order to sin.

So here, we see two potentially sinful results of a desire for knowledge: 1) pride, 2) knowledge used to sin (e.g., knowing recipes for poison). Pride, in this way, is a “sin of the neurons”–in that it is an inflated self-regard. The second kind of curiosity though really only becomes sinful when it is used for some further aim.

St. Augustine on “curiositas”

Here is a tidbit on St. Augustine’s teaching on the vice of curiositas:

“Augustine also included curiosity in a triad of sins (along with pride and carnality) which constitute the roots of the soul’s sinful movement from God….Like every expression of lust, curiosity disrupts the soul’s proper mid-rank position between God and lower bodily natures. It thereby prompts the soul to submit itself to the very things it should govern, to love what it should use for the love of God, or to become engrossed in acts proper to itself, to the neglect of universal laws common to all.” (N. Joseph Torchia, “Curiosity,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald [Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999], 260.

So, curiosity is disruptive. It leads the human soul into error, to love itself too much rather than to love what is good for it, namely God.

The Longer Answer: The Purpose of the Human Intellect

Curiosity itself is hard to classify as a sin. It is more of a vice, a tendency toward sin that can lead to sinful seeking out of forbidden knowledge, seeking knowledge for the wrong reason (pride), or seeking knowledge in order to commit sin. It’s interesting that St. Thomas actually struggles with the thought that maybe the original sin of Adam and Eve was curiosity: they desired knowledge of good and evil, a kind of knowledge that they should not have desired, and so disobeyed God (Thomas asserts though that it was out of pride that they sought this forbidden knowledge). But if we reduce things to their basic essentials, we can consider why we human beings were given an intellect in the first place. What’s the ultimate aim of all our minds? Well, God, of course. God is the aim. So anything that is diverting us from that kind of ultimate truth-seeking is leading us astray. If our pursuit of knowledge is leading us away from God instead of toward him then we are succumbing to the sin of curiosity rather than embracing the path to Truth.

It’s still hard for me to think of Curious George as an archetype of evil, but…

For further reading, check out: Paul Griffiths, The Vice of Curiosity: An Essay on Intellectual Appetite (2006).

My Post on Catholic Bible Study at the Verbum Blog

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As a blogger known as “Catholic Bible Student,” I felt honored to be asked to write a blog post for the Verbum Blog on “Catholic Bible Study.” So, while I know most of my blog posts show up here, I thought my readers would not mind if I did a guest column somewhere else as long as I provided an excerpt and a link. Over at Logos/Verbum/Faithlife (providers of the best Bible software known to man), they have been doing a series of posts on the distinctive nature of Bible study done by different denominations. So far, they have posts on:

St Jerome by Bernardo Strozzi – Gallerie Accademia

They needed a Catholic take, and I’m glad I could help. Of course, the post comes with a hefty helping of links to Verbum-provided electronic resources that can help further your journey in studying the Bible, along with references to Dei Verbum and Verbum Domini. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of my post:

Catholics love the Bible. From the Easter Sunday stroll on the road to Emmaus when the risen Jesus conducted the very first Christian Bible study—“he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45)—to today, Christians have always been drawn to the Lord through the sacred page.

Catholics are conscious of abiding in a millennia-old tradition that is mediated by Jesus and moderated by the successors of the apostles, that is, the bishops. As the Second Vatican Council taught, “It is clear therefore that, in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others” (Dei Verbum 10).

Since the time of St. Jerome, the patron of Catholic Bible study, we have been told that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.

You can read the full post here: https://blog.verbum.com/2024/03/catholic-bible-study/

Study as a Spiritual Exercise in Judaism and Protestantism—but not Catholicism?

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One of the biggest differences between Catholicism as it is actually practiced and the parallel spiritual traditions of Jews and Protestants is the almost total absence of study as a spiritual exercise.

The Jewish Tradition of Torah Study

For Jews from ancient times to now, the way to express devotion to God was to study the Torah. All other intellectual labor is forbidden on Sabbath, but Torah study is upheld as a worthy goal, a shining ideal especially on Sabbath. This study, however, is not carried out in isolation, but in vigorous conversation and even argument with fellow Jews. The place to grow closer to God is not just at synagogue prayers, but in the Beit Midrash, the House of Study—a room full of books: Torah, Talmud and other Jewish sources.


What happens during Torah study is not an idle, passive, quiet reading, but a lively interpersonal exchange of opinions, a comparison of interpretations, an open-ended dialogue in which participants take positions and defend them, pose questions and pursue their answers. Even the rabbinic sources themselves unfold in a dialogic pattern, where they offer up a multitude of contrasting opinions about the interpretation of various biblical passages. This study, this argumentation, this exchange of opinions is one of the highest spiritual exercises of the Jewish faith, upheld as the ideal to be sought.

The Protestant Practice of Bible Study
In Protestantism, we find a similar focus on the Word. While it is true that the Protestant world is dynamically fracturing before our eyes, one of the basic concepts of Protestant piety is a serious attention to the Bible. The way one gets closer to God is not merely through silent prayer or singing worship songs or hymns, but through detailed and intellectual engagement with the Sacred Page. For Protestant practice writ large (with obviously unending diversity in how it is actually done), one studies the Bible in order to spiritually grow. You bring your Bible to Church with you. The sermon is exegetical in focus, a deep Bible study by an expert interpreter (your pastor), and hopefully long enough to feel like a satisfying lesson (maybe an hour). If you want to go to the next level of commitment, the choice is clear: join a Bible study. There, while yes you might share about your life and hear about others, the ostensible goal is a deep and intellectual engagement with Scripture in the context of a community.  If you attend a well-run Protestant Bible study, you won’t find a sleepy, tired reading, but an active conversation, a communal wrestling with the meaning of the text. While the Talmud will not be consulted, participants might be looking at Study Bible footnotes, commentaries and other works to help them understand as they read, converse and engage with both the text and one another.

Catholic Apathy Toward Bible Study

Catholics, however, suffer from a certain intellectual apathy about such things. Our tradition (again, as it is typically practiced) prizes doctrinal conformity, silent prayer and receptivity. These are hugely important values in our spiritual practice, yes. They lead to receiving Scripture, Tradition and the Church itself as gifts from God, but these tendencies can lead us into a false passivity. While some Catholic Bible studies have followed the Protestant model and become engaging intellectual communities, the general trend in Catholic practice is less intellectually vigorous. That is, a diversity of views, a robust exchange of opinions over the meaning of the sacred text is not regarded as a spiritual exercise, but as an educational one. Bible study groups and other types of small groups might be accepted, but they are viewed as community events, educational opportunities, while the “real prayer” happens at Mass, in adoration or at the retreat house. Homilies tend to be very short and typically shy away from serious exegesis of Scripture—a serious departure from the example of the Church Fathers.

This situation that has developed in the Catholic realm has produced a prejudice against an intellectual engagement with the faith. I view it as a latent anti-intellectualism we American Catholics inherited from an early twentieth century social location of poorly-educated Catholic immigrant communities that prized conformity and eschewed intellectual distinctions in order to maintain their minority identity over-against the prevailing Protestant world. But in an era where more and more people are attaining high degrees of education, it is hard to maintain a merely sentimental engagement with Catholicism. The deep things of faith, which only are considered in the context of study, questioning, argument and dialogue, are often left on the table, or the bookshelf. Few parishes have theological libraries for parishoners. Few homilists offer serious and lengthy exegesis. Few Catholics own a Study Bible.

My Proposal

What I am proposing is that we learn a few things from our Jewish and Protestant friends, that we pick up our Bibles and read them, that we view study as a spiritual exercise, that we talk with one another, share opinions and swap ideas—that we truly become “Catholic Bible Students.”

Photo credits: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usembassyta/6673333713
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ljguitar/394494009

Conservation and Concentration of Energy

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I got to thinking about the conservation of one’s personal energy because of a story told by the British historian, Paul Johnson, about his boyhood encounter with the great man, Sir Winston Churchill. The story goes that the precocious young Johnson, in his youthful wisdom, asked Churchill for a piece of advice for life. This in itself shows that Proverbs is right about the fact that wisdom is not an achievement, but an attitude. The boy could hardly be adept in worldly matters, but displayed the right desire—the desire to know, to learn, to be taught. This desire in itself, so it seems, constitutes wisdom. The path to knowledge is wisdom.

A Legend
So much for my panegyrics! On to the story: Apparently Churchill replied to Johnson that “economy of effort” was his most important life principle. Johnson himself recited the 1946 story to the Wall Street Journal a few years ago:

He gave me one of his giant matches he used for lighting cigars. I was emboldened by that into saying, “Mr. Winston Churchill, sir, to what do you attribute your success in life?” and he said without hesitating: “Economy of effort. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.” And he then got into his limo.[1]

The story might be apocryphal, or at least colored by the passage of time, but it has stuck with me. Two details stand out to me. First, Churchill’s stated idea is in one way confirmed and in another way belied by his own life story. That is, it is said that he used a standing desk[2]—so he didn’t sit whenever he had the opportunity—which seems to fly in the face of his own example of never standing when you can sit down. But lest we think the great Prime Minister a hypocrite, he is also reputed to have taken regular daily naps.[3] Second, Churchill punctuates his dictum with such a hilariously apt embodiment of his stated principle: getting into a limo, the most effortless way to get around.

Conservation of Energy
“Economy of effort” could also be labeled “conservation of energy,” which is how my memory has preserved Churchill’s idea. I suppose it stuck with me that way because of the First Law of Thermodynamics, the law of conservation of energy, which I must have memorized at some point in my schooling. Obviously, there are no physics at work here in Churchill’s idea, only commonsense. That is, a person only has so much energy in a given day, a given workweek, a given lifespan. That energy must be conserved and then deployed at the right time. If you tire yourself out doing the wrong things—say wasting thousands of hours on Facebook—then you have substantially less energy to engage in the right things, like writing the next great American novel or building a treehouse.

Economy of Force
Churchill himself might have borrowed the idea of “economy of effort” from the military strategy idea of “economy of force” proposed by the 19th century Prussian strategist, Carl con Clausewitz.[4] This strategic concept is actually part of U.S. Army doctrine:

Allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts.
A-10. Economy of force is the reciprocal of mass. Commanders allocate only the minimum combat power necessary to shaping and sustaining operations so they can mass combat power for the decisive operation. This requires accepting prudent risk. Taking calculated risks is inherent in conflict. Commanders never leave any unit without a purpose. When the time comes to execute, all units should have tasks to perform.[5]

When thinking in military terms, this makes perfect sense. In war, there’s nothing worse than wasting effort and resources on the wrong objectives. If you leave 1000 troops on guard duty and only take 100 into battle, you might be overwhelmed by superior forces. It’s better to spend little and economize in the areas where you can in order to spend the most resources on the most essential task.

Dissolution
Now to my mind one of the greatest evils of our age is dissolution, the opposite of economy of force. You could call it “dithering” or “procrastinating” or something else, but the point is that so many us of us so much of the time simply waste our time. While it is easy to regard one’s own era as worse than previous ones—and most such regarding is off-base—I do believe that we have seen an uptick in dithering for one simple reason: there are so many new ways to waste time! If you wanted to waste time 100 years ago, you might have to read a long novel or write a silly letter in longhand to an old friend, activities which we would consider highly productive. But now, to waste time, all you have to do is reach in your pocket, pull out the smartphone and wile away the hours on Candy Crush or YouTube or Twitter or texting. A new study from dscout just showed that on average, we are touching our phones 2,617 times per day.[6] While it’s true that some useful, efficient business is conducted via smartphone, the largest share of activity in the study was given over to Facebook.

Concentration of Forces
So what should we do to combat our own dissolution and dithering? Well, I think it goes back to another related military doctrine: concentration of forces. You economize your use of forces in order to concentrate them. The Army also adheres to this doctrine:

Concentrate the effects of combat power at the decisive place and time.[7]

This is what I think most of us struggle with a lot of the time. We have a lot of effort, time and attention to give, but it can easily be squandered on ephemeral pixels rather than on what really matters. If you don’t believe me, have you ever found yourself repeatedly clicking the send/receive button in your inbox? There’s something about digital information that makes us twitchy. It is very easy to fall into a pattern of seeking quick hits of information, looking for some sort of stimulus that will prompt us to act—a new email, a new task, a new article—rather than planning out our strategy from the beginning and concentrating our forces on what we are actually trying to accomplish. Why do you think so many people read internet articles under 1000 words and so few people read long books?

Concentration of Energy
While the Army tries to concentrate military assets “at the decisive place and time,” each of us individually must do the same thing in order to be remotely effective in our own lives. Advertisements, for example, are the precision-strike enemy of our ability to concentrate. They deliberately distract us from our purposes and show us information we didn’t need to know or want to know, about products, prices, services and the like, most of which we don’t need, all of which we don’t need now. That’s why people hate watching TV with commercials and instead binge on Netflix. They’d rather concentrate on what they want rather than on what other people want them to concentrate on. But Netflix brings us back to the dissolution problem.
In order to meet our goals, launch our projects, achieve our personal objectives, we need to concentrate our own energies in the right direction. Allowing our attention span, our physical energy or our motivation to be sapped by the forces of distraction, whether they be low-priority, easy tasks like email or time-sucks like Netflix or Facebook, brings us down into a vortex of useless behavior, wasted time, unproductive days. Instead, we could and probably should limit the distracting inputs and focus on concentrating our time and energy in order to bring it to good effect “at the decisive place and time.”

I’m still trying to figure out how to do this in my own life and work, but I don’t think I’ll easily forget Paul Johnson’s encounter with Winston Churchill. If Churchill attributes his success to such a simple principle of “economy of effort,” then there must be ways to implement it now in the digital age. A kind of digital austerity might be a solution—deliberately avoiding unnecessary media stimulation. Some people have tried, in fact, by turning their smartphones to black-and-white,[8] implementing screen color changing software,[9] or adopting typewriter-like digital composition tools.[10] I don’t think any one of these tweaks is a total solution, but perhaps they point in the right direction. They represent efforts to concentrate one’s forces and act according to the economy of effort principle. Only time will tells, perhaps, whether we become incapacitated phone zombies[11] or effective, creative humans.

References

[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703558004574583820996589810

[2] http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24532996

[3] http://www.artofmanliness.com/2011/03/14/the-napping-habits-of-8-famous-men/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_force

[5] https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-0.pdf

[6] http://blog.dscout.com/mobile-touches

[7] https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-0.pdf

[8] http://pocketnow.com/2016/06/07/pocketnow-challenge-one-week-with-a-black-and-white-smartphone-screen

[9] https://justgetflux.com/

[10] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adamleeb/hemingwrite-a-distraction-free-digital-typewriter

[11] http://www.salon.com/2014/08/08/rise_of_the_smartphone_zombies_what_we_lose_when_technology_gives_us_everything/

St. Augustine and the Memory Palace

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I have talked about memory and memorization before, but not about the Memory Palace. What brought it to mind was this passage from Book X of St. Augustine’s Confessions:Illuminated_Manuscripts_(Middleton)_figure00

And I come to the fields and spacious palaces of my memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into it from things of all sorts perceived by the senses.

While St. Augustine is waxing eloquent about the beauty and power of memory, he drops this line which contains a relatively inconspicuous idea that is incredibly profound: the Memory Palace.

Several writers have explored the concept of the Memory Palace, how and why to build one, but let me simply just get at what it is: A Memory Palace is an imaginary building you can make in order to store information. Think of it as a mental hard drive from the Middle Ages. Hard drives have sectors where information is stored in chunks, all the way down to bits and bytes. Similarly, human beings can only store information by breaking it down into pieces and filing it away in our minds.

Unfortunately, most of us were never taught how to memorize, we were just given a pile of information and told to memorize it. Memorizing without any technique is what we call “rote” memorization, where a person simply repeats and repeats the information until it sticks. Because rote memorization is so difficult and seemingly fruitless—most of us lose whatever we had memorized in a couple days—a lot of schools have simply given up on memorization altogether. But this is a mistake.

The ancients and medievals had to memorize loads of information because few knew how to read and write proficiently and of those who did, writing utensils and parchment were expensive and hard to come by (kind of like how a pack of sticky notes will cost you ten bucks now, only worse!). So, these people had to compensate with the only computer on hand: the brain. But they weren’t lazy about it. They didn’t just throw their heads at information and hope that the two would stick together. No. They developed battle-hardened techniques over a long period of time. The essential technique is the Memory Palace.

It starts with associating an idea with a physical object like a door, or a chair. One then can “walk” through say, your own house or apartment and stow pieces of information “in” different objects. There are two themes to the technique. One is the word-object association, the other is proceeding through the palace in a certain order.

800px-Hans_Vredeman_de_Vries_(Nachfolge)_Ideale_Palastarchitektur

For example, imagine you had been asked to give a speech on the classification of living creatures. If your house has five rooms, you could put each the five kingdoms in a separate room (Bacteria, Protozoa, Plants, Fungi, Animals) and then each piece of furniture in the room could represent the phyla within that kingdom. As you proceed through this Memory Palace, you could recall each of the phyla of all five kingdoms as you give your speech. In fact, the Memory Palace was the origin of speakers saying “in the first place…” and “in the second place…” The “places” they refer to are the rooms within their memory palace.

I have found it to be a very helpful memorization technique, especially when paired with the link system and other memorization aids (e.g., making exaggerated and silly word-pictures). As our generation copes with information overload (deluge, tidal wave), we have to find ways to remember the information that is important to us, the information we need to use, connect and synthesize, not the trivia we can look up. If we want to avoid becoming Google Glass fixated cell phone addicts who can’t hold a coherent conversation because we’re so distracted with looking things up online, we might need to recover the Memory Palace that St. Augustine stood in awe of and thanked God for saying, “Great is the power of memory; very wonderful is it, O my God.”

St. Thomas Aquinas Sixteen Precepts for Acquiring Knowledge

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About six years ago, I did a post on St. Thomas Aquinas’ “16 Precepts for Acquiring Knowledge.”  The precepts are from a letter that Aquinas wrote to a certain “John.” Now, some scholars doubt the authenticity of the precepts and I’m no Medievalist to argue over such things, so I’ll leave that up to you. I first became interested in the precepts upon reading A. G. Sertillanges’ book, The Intellectual Life, which is loosely based on the precepts. Last year, I used the precepts in an introductory course that I co-taught and for lack of a standard translation out there, I did my own. I’ll provide the Latin alongside my translation here so you can judge whether it’s a good one or whether there are errors. I hope you all find it useful. And this is the only place you’ll find it on the whole internet.

St. Thomas Aquinas

Sixteen Precepts for Acquiring Knowledge (De modo studendi)

Because it was asked of me, John, my beloved in Christ, how you ought to study in the in acquiring of a treasury of knowledge, such counsel is delivered to you by me:

  1. That by rivulets, and not immediately into the sea, we choose to enter, because by the easier we must come at the more difficult. This is my warning then and your instruction:
  2. I bid you to be slow to speak
  3. and slow in coming to the place of talking.
  4. Embrace purity of conscience.
  5. Do not cease to pray.
  6. Love to keep to your cell on a regular basis if you wish to be admitted to the wine cellar.
  7. Show yourself amiable to all.
  8. Pay no heed to others’ affairs.
  9. Do not be overly familiar with anyone, because excessive familiarity breeds contempt and yields subtraction from the ability to study.
  10. In no way enter into the sayings and doings of secular persons.
  11. Above all, flee conversation; do not omit to imitate the footsteps of the saints and the good.
  12. Do not consider from whom you learn,
  13. but commit to memory whatever good is said.
  14. It is the same with what you read and hear, work so that you may understand; resolve each of your doubts.
  15. And busy yourself to store whatever you are able in the closet of your mind, as desiring to fill a vessel.
  16. do not seek what is too high for you.

 

Following these footsteps, you will put forth and bear branches and fruit in the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts as long as you have life. If you pursue this, you will be able to obtain that which you desire.

 Quia quaesisti a me, in Christo mihi carissime Ioannes, qualiter te studere oporteat in thesauro scientiae acquirendo, tale a me tibi traditur consilium:

  1. ut per rivulos, non statim in mare, eligas introire, quia per faciliora ad difficiliora oportet devenire. Haec est ergo monitio mea et instructio tua.
  2. Tardi loquum te esse iubeo
  3. et tarde ad locutorium accedentem;
  4. conscientiae puritatem amplectere.
  5. Orationi vacare non desinas;
  6. cellam frequenter diligas si vis in cellam vinariam introduci.
  7. Omnibus te amabilem exhibe;
  8. nihil quaere penitus de factis aliorum;
  9. nemini te multum familiarem ostendas, quia nimia familiaritas parit contemptum et subtractionis a studio materiam subministrat;
  10. de verbis et factis saecularium nullatenus te intromittas;
  11. discursus super omnia fugias; sanctorum et bonorum imitari vestigia non omittas;
  12. non respicias a quo audias,
  13. sed quidquid boni dicatur, memoriae recommenda;
  14. ea quae legis et audis, fac ut intelligas; de dubiis te certifica;
  15. et quidquid poteris in armariolo mentis reponere satage, sicut cupiens vas implere;
  16. altiora te ne quaesieris.

 

 

 

Illa sequens vestigia, frondes et fructus in vinea domini Sabaoth utiles, quandiu vitam habueris, proferes et produces. Haec si sectatus fueris, ad id attingere poteris, quod affectas.

Latin text: Thomas Aquinas, De modo studendi (Textum Taurini, 1954), Corpus Thomisticum, http://www.josephkenny.joyeurs.com/CDtexts/Latin/ModoStud%28false%29.htm (accessed June 29, 2011). Translation is mine. Copyright 2011 CatholicBibleStudent.com.

I should note that the “wine cellar” (cellam vinarium) in Precept #6 is a quotation from the Vulgate rendering of Song of Songs 2:4, “introduxit me in cellam vinariam ordinavit in me caritatem” (He brought me into the wine cellar, he ordered charity in me). This little idea, which in the Hebrew is closer to “house of wine” and dynamically, “banquet hall,” becomes important in Medieval spiritual reading of the Song.

Stand up at Your Desk

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So, I decided to go for it and get a standing desk. Yep. It’s a bit of a craze right now and I got inspired. For some background, there’s a NY Times article on standing desks, a few blog posts (LifeHacker, Wired, ProfHacker) and a great info graphic on how “Sitting is Killing You.” [Edit 5/23/13: Link removed by request.]

I found myself often slouching in my chair and getting that yucky tired feeling toward the end of the day. My desk is L-shaped and was relatively easy to adjust, so half of the “L” is now at my elbow height and half is at sitting height. I put my computer keyboard and monitors at standing height. So far, I love it! It’s only been a few days, but I feel less drowsy at the end of the day; I feel more alert at my desk. I don’t slouch. My legs are doing fine–it feels like I just took a walk when I leave work. I’ve been sitting down sometimes, but only after standing for 2-3 hours. Yesterday I stood for 4 hours straight. I’m hoping that I’ll shed some pounds, gain some muscle and become more productive. We’ll see!

How to Read (A lot of) Books

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I found a helpful blog post by Matthew Cornell on how to read a lot of books in a short period of time. Students and scholars alike always need to be reading a lot of books. A book that has been helpful to me is How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. It’s a classic, but it is more about reading in general than it is about reading fast. It will help you read faster, but more importantly, it will help you read better. Adler understands and explains the purpose of reading and how to go about it in the most productive way. As far as quick reading, I have looked through The Complete Idiots’ Guide to Speed Reading by Abby Marks Beale and Pam Mullen. This book pulls together a lot of advice from   many different speed reading approaches and techniques. It’s kind of a buffet of techniques rather than a particular approach.

The principles that have been helpful to me are:

  • Set apart a large block of time for reading.
  • Avoid all distractions. (Usually this means going to a place for reading, like a coffee shop or library, where you are less likely to be distracted than in whatever normal place you have like your living room or office.)
  • Stop sub-vocalizing! (Most people sub-vocalize words as they read them, because they learned to read by speaking. Once you overcome this problem–by humming, breathing, or just not doing it–your reading speed will increase.)
  • Use a card to guide your eye. (This technique involves using an index card to lead your eye down the page more quickly than it would go by itself. I don’t do this all the time, but sometimes.)
  • Don’t read every word and skip some stuff.
  • Read in a brightly lit environment, the brighter the better.
  • Interest yourself in your author’s ideas. (That means you have to “get” what the author is talking about so that your mind can ride on the track which he has laid down. If you don’t get the story he’s trying to tell you’ll find yourself lost and hopelessly uninterested.)

Speed reading is kind of like swinging a golf club. There’s a whole lot of techniques and things to remember and you can only utilize so much them at any given time. But with some effort, anyone one who can read can read faster.