His Memory

Once upon a time we were at a bed-n-breakfast, and Dr Scaer was there too. At breakfast, he was politely making conversation and asked about our homeschooling. Somehow I got on a roll and ended up talking about how great it is that kids can educate themselves and might not even need college. Suddenly I gasped, realizing I was denigrating the necessity of college to a man who has spent most of his life as a professor. Oooops!

A few years later we were attending the symposium on the Lutheran Confessions at Fort Wayne. Being a TLH family, we had to blunder our way through unfamiliar prayer services in chapel for the first part of the week. But on the final day of the symposium, prayers were
matins from TLH,
Psalm 98 chanted from the back of the hymnal,
and hymn 132 "O God of God, O Light of Light."

Now, it so happens that we have memorized all those things. And it so happens that Dr Scaer came and sat down next to us in chapel that day. With my 16-yr-old son between me and the good doctor, we said/sang our prayers without crackin' the book.

After chapel, Dr Scaer suggested that the reason "you homeschoolers" have kids who've memorized so much of the hymnal is because we've failed to teach them to read. He suggested that it might be easier to teach them to read before they're 20 than to teach them to memorize the whole hymnal and psalter.

zinnnnnnng!