Bible memorization

This year SexyMamma and I decided to work on memorizing parts of the Bible. Now that Lent is upon us, I have begun in earnest, and I have to say that so far I like it.

This year, I am aiming to memorize all of John's epistles (1,2,3 John, and the first however many chapters of Revelations) as well as "Psalms". Not all of the psalms, but I want to start moving that direction. So I decided I'm going to try taking it a psalm a week. I figure that if I can keep that up, I'll get through almost a third of the psalms this year, and maybe in three years I'll have memorized the whole thing!

Now, this leads to the inevitable question of how I'll maintain my work. Once I've memorized a psalm, how often will I revisit it to keep it 'fresh'? And the answer is: I haven't gotten that far yet. But I did figure out one thing that is keeping me encouraged:

I have decided that my memorization goals are two-fold: 1) In the first week, memorize it as close to verbatim as possible; this includes punctuation. 2) After the first week is over, I would like to be able to recite it verbatim, but mostly I want to have a solid enough memory of each psalm that I can remember, "Hey, I think Psalm 3 says something about going to bed and waking up..." and be able to find my way through the psalms fairly easily.

So my method at this point is to learn them tactilely. That is, I'm learning them by writing them, rather than by reading or speaking them. I print the psalm of the week on a 3x5 card that I can carry around, and then I keep a scratch-pad and nice pen on me, so that whenever I have a few spare minutes I can practice writing out my work. This means that I get to use that tactile part of myself with which I identify so closely, and I have something beneficial with which to fill all of the little cracks and gaps of my life.