For at least a few years now I've wanted to regularly jot a note on what I'm thinking about. So here's the first on this platform.
Things I've been thinking about over the last couple weeks:
- Imaginative prayer: This is absolutely at the forefront of my meditations. I haven't come up with a better term for it. But it 's the idea that our imaginations are created by God, and because our minds are being transformed, we can trust it more and more to show us actual spiritual things. Not in an abstract way, but concrete and before your mind's eye. Chris Carter has some great resources on this, particularly his books Cosmic Shift and Caught Up In the Spirit. This approach to prayer has absolutely blown me away because I can actually see the Lord's goodness face-to-face. The abstract distant concept I used to hold in my mind as prayer is nothing compared to see his gentleness and goodness in everything action, every word, every glance towards me. I want to know how to present this to people so they quickly see how accessible it is to them too.
- Why Westerns are great: I've recently watched the show Godless and the movie Hostiles. Viewing them both so close to one another showed me that Westerns are such a great world to explore moral and ethical choices. There's a semblance of the Law but that's not enough deterrent to decide your morality for you. So whether you shoot or not is up to your morality. I like sci-fi as a venue to question assumptions about cultural development and the limitations of physics. Westerns also bring me back to A Tale of the Western Plains by G. A. Henty, a childhood favorite, though at the time I most enjoyed the grit and independence of the characters.
- The state of America - It boggles my mind that our Constitutional institutions are held in such small regard by "self-titled patriots" wearing shirts with quotes from the very same Constitution. To say nothing of the silent consent or, at worst provocation, that the President has conveyed. I know there's anger, but the skepticism and outright antagonism towards the DoJ, state governors, the electoral college, and now the Congress, is a stunning example of professed values not matching practiced values. There's so much more to say. The information space is prepped for some drastic actions to "make sense" to people. And our role on the world stage is threatened for as long as this democracy we love to export continues to show its susceptibility to people who don't honor the system. It's more disheartening that the ones who are dishonoring and undermining the Constitutionally-establish institutions the most are ones who say they would do the most to protect the Constitution. To me it shows that many who invoke the Constitution are in fact saying "keep things as they were in the past", not actually upholding a system posited about. I'm no Constitutional scholar but I struggle to see how any of them would say things have gone so far astray that anyone should be armed at the Capitol.
- How systems are impacted by what they incentivize: This has been a recurring theme to me. You can see it in the media, investing, prison systems, social media spreading disinformation. As long as the systems we develop are bent in some way, incentives will draw out unexpected results.
- Reviewing 2020: I used the YearCompass booklet to review 2020. I'm still not finished with charting 2021, but the year review was great. I usually don't do well when I review even my weekend, and end up rating it as good or bad. YearCompass prompts some good questions and thought. I'll add to it for next year to align more with some specific values and goals, but it's a great jumping off point.
- Giving 2020 some credit: Like hating Nickelback, hating 2020 has become a meme to that point that I don't even think most people truly believe it, they just repeat what others are saying. For me, 2020 was fantastic. And I don't feel bad saying that because my good experience doesn't diminish the impact so many have experienced. Both ideas - 2020 was great for me yet bad for others - can exist in the same space. It's both-and, not either-or. But in 2020 I grew so much closer to the Lord than ever before, to degrees of intimacy and understanding of how much and how personally he loves me, that I never thought possible. This year was also another great one for Family who I feel closer to than ever before as well.
- Data curation: How do I organize data and knowledge so I can access it consistently across devices (PC, phone, NAS), tools (folder system, electornic note-taking), and environments (work and personal). /r/datacurator has been helpful but I still haven't finalized my system. I'm getting closer though.
- Conspiracy theories: In particular, how they undermine a concept of Truth by rejecting or explaining away evidence to the contrary. It really makes you think about how the whole idea of Truth is based on a shared agreement that something is True. It feels very meta to think about.
That's a wrap. At least one of these could be its own post, but this format lets me get the thoughts out without feeling I have to make an argument of some kind.