A Lost Art

So, the other night I was praying through what I could do to enliver my heart more toward Christ. I know that, a lot of the time, I will feel that I am distant from God, think about how I need to get more disciplined, and then write it off because I know that my relationship with God is about desire and not just discipline and duty.
Here's the thing: My desires are not rightly disciplined. Last year I was part of a guys group that read through Dallas Willard's Spirit of the Disciplines. His premise is that the Christian disciplines (reading the Bible, praying, fasting, contemplation, memorization, service) are present as tools for us to discipline our bodies and make them our servants (1 Corinthians 9:24-27). The disciplines are not the end in and of themselves (a point that most in our Christian culture seem to understand all too well), but it is unrealistic (and unbiblical) of us to believe that we can truly live like Jesus without making a conscious decision to present our bodies and minds to Him. Paul says in Romans 6:12-13:

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

I think there is a lot to be said for presenting ourselves to God, on a daily basis, through what we call the disciplines.
Anyway, all that is introductory to what I am really excited about. One of the things I felt led to do was to do some memorization. I just started memorizing John 15 yesterday, and it has been so rich to have the Scripture in my head, and to wrestle through it, and to pray through it.
I know that some of us are more inclined toward memorization than others, but I refuse to believe that we are not all capable of it at some level. This "lost art" has been so rich for me. I encourage everyone to consider how God might use the memorization of key passages in your own lives.
Just for fun, I'll do my best to write out from memory what I have memorized so far:

I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch in Me that bears fruit, He prunes so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, so I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and your joy may be made full.