lately i've been thinking about what i've been thinking about.
it's kind of like looking at yourself in a mirror and there's a mirror behind you where you can see yourself looking in the mirror...
but kind of not, since there's really no point to the infinite number of mirror-looking-selves, whereas reflecting on thoughts has a definite point. i've spent the last few days feeling perpetually full in my mind. kind of like i just ate a lot of food, and it never digests. i just keep eating and eating, it keeps getting replenished. my brain has yet to stop thinking thoughts constantly, and when there seems to be a lull, i find something else i could be thinking about or doing which then occupies the mind with problem-solving thoughts...
i feel like i'm out of breath, but in a meaningless sort of way, not really accomplishing anything significant. i can keep coming up with things to make while my students work on their projects, i can keep planning what project they should work on next, i can keep replaying my last conversation with nick, i can keep reminding myself of the things i need to remember... but i feel a little empty in it all. like i'm mindlessly eating but not because i'm hungry.
what i'm working around to is the idea that i want to be thinking thoughts about the lord, i want my heart to be drawn to his goodness and mercy and plans and promises. during my first year of teaching, i used to write out verses on little scraps of paper and carry them around with me and read them over and over again. not really with the goal of memorizing them, but just to make them become a part of the fiber of my understanding of who god is and subsequently to be changed by that understanding -- my actions to be molded and reshaped into his, my passions to be rearranged. i don't know at what point i stopped doing that, but it was a good practice. maybe i'll take it back up.
my favorite verse that i remember from that phase was from psalm 43:
send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. then will i go to the altar of god, to god, my joy and my delight.
i love every part of that verse.
this is just a detention-duty-driven ramble on what happens to be going through my thoughts recently. no real point, except to encourage myself to be turning my thoughts more to the lord and less to mindless fullness. and maybe encourage you in that same pursuit if it happens to relate.
and can i just say i am absolutely sick of the phrase, 'are you kidding me?!' (insert attitudey teenager look of utter disdain) i've heard that from about 7 kids today and i'm about to smack them all.
see, i really do need to start carrying those slips of verse around again. i'm very unchrist-like.
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6 comments:
I like that you use analogies... you have something to liken everything else to. Metacognition is like looking at yourself in a mirror that is looking at a mirror image of you, or my mind is so full it's like a huge meal of enchiladas... etc. I love it.
Thinking about one's thoughts is always the best way of finding that which one worships. I think...
I know what you mean - of course not exactly because we are two different people, but I understand what you are saying about the "meaninglessness" and it's true that it can only be filled with Jesus. Joel just got me a new bible that has once again sparked my excitement for the Word (not that it wasn't always there, but it was lower then it has been at other points in my life.) So - maybe you should get one too! It's an ESV translation and according to my husband and a huge number of other greek and hebrew scholars, it is "the bomb"...well, maybe they don't use that term, but it really is. It's SO amazing and so much easier for me to memorize. Joel is so in love with it too because (he knows greek and is studying hebrew) and the translations are REALLY amazingly AMAZING. They are also AMAZINGly cute - check um out.
http://www.gnpcb.org/catalog/bibles/
Okay, reading this entry was a very weird experience. Weird as in I completely relate to what you said... and weird as in it made me think completely different about how I think about myself thinking.
I don't know if that makes sense, but I don't think it even matters.
You are a very profound woman. I always feel intelligent just by reading your thoughts. :D
Kate - I read the first part of your blog, and I was hoping that you would finish the entry the way you did - haven't we just fallen away from pure and simple discipline to read and study the Word of God and to pray all the time?? I know I have. What a good challenge to me. Muchas gracias. I keep thinking how retarded it is that I never write about what I am learning at Bible School on our site. But then again people just want pictures of the babies! :)
jay -- yes! i definitely agree. worship has so many definitions attached to it that they all turn into a muddle in my brain, but a nice and simple one just has to do with what we dwell on -- i want to shift my worship away from myself and toward the lord. i rarely connect that being self-absorbed, distracted, or otherwise busy in the mind is a form of self-worship. yuck! how sweet and refreshing to worship the lord just in a change of thoughts -- no tambourines required.
and i like how you added in the specifics of what that huge meal might be -- mmm... enchiladas... it's been too long.
ashley -- i can't help but check out a bible translation that is simultaneously 'the bomb' and amazingly cute!! that's gotta be some bible.
bethany -- thank you! you're so sweet! ever moving to branson?
and laurita -- i do love pictures of babies but i would love equally yet differently to hear all about that book-learnin' from time to time and how it's affecting your heart. in fact i would WELcome it with open arms.
Thanks for sharing that verse, Kate. I too am trying to take a more active role in my thought patterns--not that I wasn't already analytical to a fault, but finding out exactly what I am dwelling on and whether or not it is truth; that is the key.
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