The Discipline of Thinking

This may sound strange, but lately I've been having trouble thinking. No, not the kind of thinking that analyzes the last episode of LOST or decides what to make for dinner. I find myself mentally stumbling when I'm forced to think about the ideas that are the undercurrent of our whole lives - ethics, theology, philosophy.

This is what I've spent the that last five years doing, learning to think and, in response, act. I've read and discussed, read and discussed, and then lain awake at night thinking about what has been discussed. I was trained to be a careful student of life, noticing threads of intertextuality throughout the scriptures that necessarily informed the arenas in literature and history too. Books were no longer merely text on page, but rose into the three dimensional displaying a spectrum of color. Books lived and demanded to be interacted with.

Daily I was reading. Weekly I was writing. Monthly I was leading seminars. I was forced to be disciplined thinker and it made college, and life, so very rich.

However now, I don't have the same pressure to thoughtfully think about key issues. Conversations about the warrants of Liberation Theology, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics or Colonialism and modern Mission don't come up in the grocery line, or even over dinner. The days come and fade, and this discipline of thinking has started to fade as well.

I'm not quite sure what to do. I don't want to be that over - critical, slightly annoying college student who has something to say about everything (for I was/ have been that person for far too long), I want to be realistic about my stage of life. Is there a way to continue developing this skill, even if there is no class to join or peers to debate with? Is there hope for thinking after college?

To be an Auntie

When I was back on the Island for the Christmas holiday, I got to make the wonderful acquaintance of my new baby niece. She was born hours before I boarded a plane back to the prairie and I can't wait until July when Jordan and I make the long drive to visit again. As I wait patiently until then, I must be satisfied with pictures and little chats detailing all the cute things that my new niece does.

In other words, I am a very excited Auntie! I can't wait to tell her fairy stories, bake cookies with her, or go on adventures together. What could be a better job then to be an Auntie?

February: The thick of things

I am a horrible blogger.

I do, however, like the option of writing something, sometime, if I wanted to. So my blog still stands after months of silence.

It is the beginning of February on the cold Prairie. It seems that there has been months of silence here too. The quiet, slow, days seem void and my eyes are dulled. In past Winters, the hope of Spring has been a helpful nudge on days (and months) like these, but I feel caught in a whiteout with no apparent way forward.

Since graduating last April, life has taken a turn. School is the only thing I've ever really known, but it is over, and it can't be changed. Many of the friends I "went to college with" have gone, one by one. Even the school I attended has changed, with new students and professors. Nothing is as I knew it. So I am forced to be left behind or be changed myself.

I feel in the thick of things, this February. I'm waiting, and I've been waiting, but I don't know what for. This silence was liberating at first, but now it feels numbing. Waiting needs expectancy yet I feel like perhaps I have lost my original purpose.

I know I need to "wait for rain" as Kathleen Norris would say. I know there are signs of life all around me. And I know that the quiet and solitude are ways to kindle a great fire inside. But for today, I just feel a little lost in the fog of my prairie life.