Learning and faith

Learning and faith are powerfully connected. Learning increases faith, and faith is required for learning to take place. Faith and learning are a self-reinforcing pair that can form a virtuous cycle – leading the learner to ever greater light and knowledge of the truth. But the right conditions must be in place. This concept is very new to me and I have only begun to explore it, so this post is just a first stab at what seems to be an extremely important area of study.

While my exposure to the concept goes back further, I was most recently inspired by a passage in the Doctrine and Covenants (a book of revelations given by Jesus Christ to his prophet, Joseph Smith and considered scripture by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), section 88, verse 118. Let me quote the passage here:

“And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”

I found it striking that the response to a lack of faith was to teach: “as all have not faith…teach one another…” Learning, in other words, begets faith. But also, at the end of the verse, we are commended to “seek learning…by faith.” So the reverse is also true: faith is essential to learning!

Now, the atheist or agnostic is probably rolling her eyes at this point, thinking “hey, I don’t need to believe in God to be able to learn. And learning doesn’t make me believe in God either.” Good point. But I never said one had to believe in God to be able to learn. What I said, was that faith was necessary for learning. Let me clarify: faith is belief. To have faith is to believe something with less than 100% certainty. Anytime you have less than absolute proof of something, but you believe it none the less, you have faith.

Faith is therefore a part of every human life, not just those with spiritual or religious inclinations. When scientists first propose a new theory or idea, they have little proof that they’re right. But they advance the idea anyway – believing it to be true before they know for sure. This is faith. Even after much evidence has been collected, there is still uncertainty in the result. In fact, scientists are required to quantify their uncertainty. For example, they might be able to say, “we are confident of this result to within one tenth of a percent.” But even then they can’t know for sure that their theory is correct. Further experimentation might overturn their theory, or reveal it to have been only partially true. So to believe the theory is correct still requires faith.

Another way to see it is that faith is confidence that something is true. The more faith you have in someone or something, the more confident you are in that person or thing. Under this definition, a scientist’s faith in a theory increases as more evidence is discovered that supports the theory. This may seem counter-intuitive, but faith is actually proportional to the degree of certainty, not inversely proportional – as many mistakenly think.

Now back to learning. My first claim was that learning increases faith. How is this so? If we use the concept of faith as confidence that something is true, then it becomes clearer. Say I have heard of a particular principle, idea, or concept (let’s go with ‘concept’ from here on out, for simplicity’s sake), but I’m not at all sure I believe it is true. Perhaps I have only heard it explained vaguely or briefly and my understanding of it is not very strong. At this stage, my lack of faith (or confidence) in the concept is justified: I cannot have faith in something I do not even understand. That would be foolish, and atheists and agnostics are right to criticize this behavior – what is often referred to as ‘blind faith.’ True faith is not blind: it is a well-founded confidence that something is true. To gain that confidence, I must first increase my understanding; in other words, I must learn.

There is, of course, no guarantee that the more I learn about a concept the more confident I will be in its truthfulness. On the contrary, I may discover that it is an unreliable or even completely false concept, and my faith in it will diminish. And rightfully so: since faith is confidence in the truthfulness of something, as you discover that it is not true, your faith in that thing should diminish.

From the preceding argument it should now be clear that as knowledge and understanding grow, so does faith. This is simply because you cannot have faith (or confidence) in something you do not understand. If, through learning and increased understanding, you discover a concept to be false, then you discard it and your faith is no greater than before. But if you discover it to be true (or that there is some truth to be found in it – perhaps it is only partly true), then your faith has grown in that thing – and your overall faith in the truth has therefore augmented. As you discard false notions and embrace those that are true, your knowledge expands to an ever-wider circle, encompassing a larger subset of all truth. And as it does, so does your faith in the truth.

So much for learning increasing faith. One final word, however. And this is so important that I feel bad adding it as an addendum, but this post is getting too long and I need more time to think about it. For this process to occur (for learning to increase faith), the teacher must also have faith in what she is teaching. Faith increases a teacher’s capacity to promote learning.

The key here is that the teacher must teach with her faith. In other words, she must communicate her faith in the concept to the student. A teacher who does not really believe what she is teaching – or who is incapable of communicating that faith to the student – is much less likely to be able to assist the student in increasing her own understanding and faith. In other words, she will be a less effective teacher.

This is because it is very possible to learn something by rote without really gaining confidence that it is true. Stated otherwise, it is possible to simply learn about something without really learning it. To truly understand something, you must find out for yourself if it is true. You must be confident about the matter. Only then have you truly learned it. Faith, therefore, is a strong barometer for learning.

Which brings us, of course, to my second claim: that faith is necessary to learning, and increases both its pace and quality. But this point will have to wait for a later post.

The meaning of each day

The prime value and meaning of each new day is that it is an opportunity to love. If we cannot come to see life this way, we will not have lived to the fullest, or gained what we were intended to gain.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard is that you should always be thankful every day just for waking up. Don’t take it for granted that you will wake up tomorrow and have another day to live.

I’ve often wondered about this advice. It sounds so true – to use a physics analogy (which I warned you in my introductory post might happen occasionally), it makes my soul resonate on some of its most fundamental frequencies when I hear it and think about it. But I’m not sure I truly know why. I mean, most days I’m not frankly that grateful to wake up. I know that sounds awful, but it’s true. And why? Because most days are so full of responsibilities, expectations, requirements, work and stress that I can’t honestly say that I wake up saying to myself, “Oh goody, here we go again! I love this!”

Which gives me pause to consider why the advice to be grateful every day just for waking up is so profoundly true. I mean, I’m not grateful. But I ought to be. What am I missing?

My own experience has provided a window of insight (and I’m sure, on reflection, you will discover yours has too) that might lead to a breakthrough on this one. In an attempt to resolve the conundrum, I asked myself, “have I ever been grateful just to wake up? When have I been grateful to be alive, to have the incredible pleasure of living? When has life been joyful to me?” Let me share with you some examples I thought of, and see if you can tease out the commonalities, the underlying themes.

The first experience I thought of was during my two year volunteer mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (hereafter referred to as “the church” – yeah, it’s kinda long). For two years I spent all day, every day with a colleague talking to people about God, his son Jesus, and the plan they have for our lives here on Earth. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but for most of it I was legitimately happy. Sure, there were times when the homesickness (I served thousands of miles from home), difficulty getting along with my colleague, or the stress of talking to complete strangers in a foreign language overwhelmed my happiness. I’m only human. But for most of the time, life was joyful and I was happy. Not because life was easy. It certainly wasn’t. But even though it was hard, I was happy.

Second, I thought of a time when I volunteered (after my mission ended) on a committee – again, affiliated with the church – that organized, planned, and put on inspirational talks and lectures about spiritual matters and life in general for the students at my university. We would invite talented, wise individuals to come address the student body (the event was open to the entire university, but most of those who attended were members of the church), then prepare the main meeting hall of one of our churches for the event. This involved setting up hundreds if not thousands of chairs. Then, after everyone had left (which often took an hour after the event ended) we would take down the chairs and clean the building before heading home. In all, it would often take four or more hours of effort on the day of the event and several hours of preparation beforehand.

One winter night after one of these events I left particularly late. As I exited the building I realized it had been snowing hard the entire time and the ground was covered in at least 2 feet of snow. It was cold, and I hadn’t dressed for the snow, as it wasn’t snowing when I had arrived hours before. I trudged across the parking lot, the snow coming up past my knees, heading towards my car. It was a lump of white in an otherwise deserted parking lot: I was the last to leave. As I unburied my car with my arms, I remembered I had a test the following day in a very difficult physics class and I hadn’t had time to study much.

It was then that a funny realization hit me: I was happy! I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. I was cold; I was wet; I was the last to leave on a miserable snowy night; I had a test the next morning that I should have been stressed out about. But I wasn’t – on the contrary, I was happy.

I could mention other experiences too, but for the sake of brevity I’ll leave it at two. Thinking back on these and other times I felt truly happy to be alive, I discovered the following remarkable correlation: my being happy had nothing whatever to do with the ease of my life. The level of ease, of pain, of convenience, of entertainment and fun; all these had nothing to do with my happiness. In fact, if these had been the prime determinants of my happiness or misery, I should have been very miserable, not happy.

Instead, it seemed to me that I had been ignoring my own ease, pain, convenience, or entertainment, and that this had somehow caused me to be happy. As soon as this thought hit me, I remembered my reasons for not being happy to wake up every morning. I had thought that so long as my life were stress-free, responsibility-free – in short, full of ease, convenience, fun, and short on pain, then I should be happy. And being grateful to wake up every day would be natural.

I realized that I was completely wrong. In fact, the focus on my own life and my stress, troubles, responsibilities, etc was what was bringing me down! When I forgot to think about them because I was too busy thinking about others, worrying about or serving others, I was truly happy. The motto “forget yourself” came to mind. As did Jesus’ teaching, “for whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

Which leads me back to my conclusion: the meaning of each day – the reason to be grateful and happy just to wake up one more time – is that it affords each of us the opportunity to live for others, not ourselves. In short, each day is an opportunity to love.  

The odd link between pain and anger

The other day I was thinking about anger. Where does it come from? Why do we feel this powerful emotion? And why does it always feel like reaction? Reaction to what? Trying to trace this emotion back to its source, I came across a rather startling realization: in almost all cases, anger originates from pain and/or fear. An angry person is one who has been hurt, who is suffering, or who is afraid. And properly dealing with that pain or fear can quench the anger. 

I’m not sure exactly how I stumbled on this, but if you think about specific examples and try to trace the anger back to its source, you almost always run into pain or fear, or both. Indeed, fear is the source of significant pain and anguish, so the connection is hardly surprising.

For instance, take a group of three friends. Initially, they are all equally close to one another, more or less; but over time, two of them grow closer to each other than to the third. The two are happy and sense nothing wrong, but over time the third friend grows inexplicably angry with the other two, being mean or spiteful for no apparent reason. The two friends might interpret this to mean that the third doesn’t really like them anymore, when in fact the opposite is true: the anger stems from her hurt feelings at being excluded or feeling less loved.

Or an even simpler example: you stub your toe hard. What do you do? You hop around, cursing like a sailor for half a minute while the pain subsides. Someone walking in on this scene might be frightened by the sudden burst of angry words. But there’s no cause for alarm – the anger will subside with the pain.

At first, I was confused as to why pain would lead to anger. Pain inspires sympathy and a tender desire to help and comfort. Fury, in contrast to pain, drives others away and discourages the kind of comfort and love that would best address the suffering that caused the rage in the first place. It all seems very counter productive and ironic to me.

Yet it’s true. Every time I feel angry about something it comes down to an offense: someone or something offended me, hurt my pride or my feelings. But if this natural reaction is so counterproductive, then perhaps by understanding the reason behind it one can learn to overcome it. This is especially important in light of Jesus’ famous statement: “Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must needs be that offenses come.” (Matthew 18:7, KJV) I take this to mean simply that it is impossible to avoid being offended in this life; people and circumstances are going to offend you every single day. So the sooner we overcome the knee-jerk reaction to resort to anger, the better off we will be.

So why is it that pain and fear give rise to anger? I think, after some reflection, that it arises from two factors. First, anger is an anesthetic, a painkiller. We resort to anger because it distracts us from our pain. Think back to the stubbed toe example. Why resort to cursing while you hop around on one foot? Because it takes your mind off of your throbbing toe a little. That’s why the cursing tends to subside with the throbbing.  Or the friend who has been excluded forgets her hurt and loneliness and rejection by focusing instead on being mean. She may not even consciously recognize that her anger is the result of her feelings of rejection, so effectively has her anger distracted her.

Second, the alternative to responding in anger makes you feel helpless; and people don’t like to feel helpless. Responding in anger gives the impression of accomplishing something  - and sometimes, if directed carefully and properly, anger can lead to getting important things done. But most often the perception of power that comes with anger is illusory and short-lived, or at worst is highly destructive, rather than productive. But those who suppress the resort to anger have little choice but to quietly, humbly endure the pain. To be honest, this is extremely hard to do. It’s why Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek is so revolutionary – and difficult. You simply have to submit to the pain without any distraction or anesthetic. Resisting the urge to anger and quietly, patiently enduring pain is, I think, at the heart of what it means to be Christian.

There is something magical in enduring pain and suffering without recourse to anger and wrath. It prevents the wounds to self and others that rage always inflicts. But it also changes you. Great patience is required, and I have learned that patience is the greatest virtue of them all; where it goes, every other blessing follows. By resorting to anger, you are forfeiting the chance to mold your character in the heat of affliction. Sometimes absorbing that heat (rather than directing it outwards at others) allows impurities to burn away, leaving you more refined.

I certainly haven’t discovered every aspect of this issue, but I’m intrigued by the connection. It seems to me that this is one of those golden keys to wisdom, maturity, and happiness in life. And like all such keys it is difficult to master. Jesus himself mastered it to perfection – which indicates how important it is for us to follow and do likewise.

P.S. I hope I haven’t offended the reader by my frequent references to Jesus. It’s just that he is, in my mind, the greatest teacher of all time; so whether or not you believe he is the savior of the world, I hope you can appreciate his role as a teacher.

The courage that should rightfully be yours

You only have the courage that should rightfully be yours when you have nothing to lose.

This says a lot about us as human beings. It says a lot about the power of fear, and the pain of hope. I think it’s sobering. After all, we shouldn’t let fear rule our lives, right?

Let me tell you a story that illustrates my point. There was this girl. From the moment I saw her I was taken aback. I immediately knew I wanted to know her better, I wanted to be a part of her life. And I wanted her to be a part of mine. It’s crazy, yeah – I mean, love at first sight is just a fantasy, right? A daydream? Maybe it is. But that’s the way I felt about her, right or wrong.

The trouble, though, was that whenever she was near me, I totally lost my cool. I mean, I’m not a confident person by any stretch of the imagination, and I lack the natural facility in social situations that many people have. But what limited social skills I do possess abandoned me ruthlessly every time she walked in the room. I laughed in a ridiculously giddy manner at everything she said; I smiled twice as much as any sane person ever should. In short, I wasn’t myself anymore. I was this different person.

Why the transformation? Sadly, I think it’s because I was hoping she wouldn’t see me, but rather someone better than me. I hoped I could make her think I was cooler, more fun, interesting, nice and impressive than I really was. I was trying to hoodwink her because I was terrified she wouldn’t like the real me, that she wouldn’t return my sentiments for her.

We’ve all been down that road – liking someone more than they like us. It sucks. And I couldn’t bear to think through what that might be like if it happened this time - but it’s happened to me before, so I had a pretty good idea. I suppressed the thought vigorously, but it came leaking through anyway, turning my hope into agony and further eroding my self-confidence – which in turn made the transformation into my exaggerated self whenever she was around all the more extreme.

Long story short: we went out a few times; I got my hopes up; I asked her to be my girlfriend; and she turned me down. Sad. But hardly remarkable or noteworthy. This kind of stuff happens every day all over the planet. Get over it, right? That’s what I did. Or, at least, I got over her as much and as fast as my heart would allow me to. I studiously avoided the “woe is me, I’m gonna slit my wrists now” mentality. I moved on.

I avoided her as much as possible. Because, try as I might, I never failed to notice her the instant she walked into the room, and I couldn’t think straight as long as she was there. I’ve decided that love is like sediment and your heart is like a glass of water. Once you fall in love with someone like that, the sediment is always there. As long as you don’t stir it up, though, it will settle at the bottom and you won’t notice it’s there. So I avoid past crushes as studiously as possible to keep things inert, like some stratified, love-sick geology.

But one day, I just couldn’t. I was somewhere I wanted to be, with people I wanted to be with, and poof, in she walks. Dang! This was several weeks after it was over and almost as long since I had seen her last. I decided it was time to stop avoiding her and just go say hello. So I did.

And guess what? I didn’t transform. Nothing. I was cool, collected, my head on my shoulders and my feet on the ground. I didn’t giggle or laugh (more than I normally do, anyway ;) and I carried on a rather lengthy conversation (compared to what I had intended) as if she was just any ordinary person. You know what else? I didn’t have any hope whatsoever that this would lead to anything else. I wanted to say hi, and that’s all. I knew I would say a few short words, that she would give me a few seconds of her attention, and then I would depart and I wouldn’t be on her mind for a second longer.

My twin lack of hope and transformation were linked. Because I had zero hope, (and therefore zero fear) I was able to be myself. And the funny thing is she was the one keeping the conversation going, not me. And she suggested we go see a movie we had wanted to see together, not me. And she gave me a wonderful, long, sincere hug when I said goodbye. I hadn’t planned on any physical contact at all. The irony of this all struck me like a meteor on my way home. I felt like it was condensing on my clothes, it was so thick.

What a shame! Are we so consumed by self-doubt and so afraid that our dreams won’t come true that we can’t be ourselves? Are we truly afraid to be ourselves? I know I was when she was around. I didn’t want to be me – I wanted to be someone else, someone better than me. I knew (or feared) instinctively that I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t good enough to make her like me.

The sad truth is we should be brave enough to be ourselves – to own ourselves - faults, weaknesses, foibles and all. And we should be strong enough to admit that not everyone is going to like us, we aren’t going to be the most popular, loved and admired person on the planet.

I think, deep down, we need to love ourselves for who we are. And yeah, that’s hard, because no one’s perfect, and so loving ourselves means coming to terms with the parts of us that aren’t admirable, that aren’t beautiful, and that might need some work to change. But there’s no use pretending to be more than we really are in the mean time, or wishing that others won’t notice the bad along with the good. God loves us the way we are, and encourages us to become better, more, greater. He doesn’t want us to doubt ourselves, to hate ourselves.

But how do you possibly overcome the fear that your dreams won’t come true when most of the time they don’t? I’m not sure on this one. Perhaps all I can offer is this: when you want something good, and you give all you can give and do all you can do within your power to get it (and by this I mean when you are truly yourself, the best you can be), then that’s all. The rest isn’t up to you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If it doesn’t turn out, then that hurts, and I’m sorry. But isn’t that the way life is? Being yourself is really all you can do.

A little understanding goes a long way

Wow, it’s been a while since I started this blog and still nothing to show for it but the introductory post. Hopefully this won’t become a tradition – but each post does take a good deal of thought and time, so maybe it’s inevitable.

What I’m posting today are some of my thoughts on understanding other people and other points of view – why we are sometimes afraid to understand, and why it is so vital that we seriously try.

Pretty much everyone has a way of seeing things, of interpreting the world around them; you might call this a person’s worldview. It’s like a lens or filter through which all information must pass before it is received by the individual. This filter affects the way he or she  perceives everything, from interpersonal relationships to politics to the weather. None of us are always fully aware of this filtering process (some of us are rarely aware at all) – and yet it affects every moment of every day.

Sometimes, I have what I call “moments of clarity,” when I see things so clearly, and the connections between events become so obvious, and my past and future seem so intimately linked that I marvel that I couldn’t see it before. It’s like the filter was suddenly cleaned of the gunk that normally clogs it; or the lens warping my vision was temporarily removed and my eyesight became momentarily ‘20/20’.

But these moments of clarity don’t last long, and to be honest they are few and far between, at least in my experience they have been. Which means that, most of the time, the filtering and interpreting and warping goes on unchecked and mostly unnoticed. We get so comfortable with the way we see the world that when someone challenges us with a different point of view, we don’t want to hear about it. We throw out our stock retorts to their challenge and retreat within the dark, safe, familiar recesses of our minds, seeking shelter from rays of light that might reveal…what? We don’t usually know exactly, but we’d rather not find out!

This is why people are sometimes afraid to try and understand someone or something different from themselves, and why few make a sincere effort to do so. I think, somewhere deep down, we’re afraid that if we do, we will discover that something we had always assumed and believed to be true actually isn’t after all. Or that what we believed is still valid, but we had understood only in part – we had seen only one side of the matter. Or perhaps we’re afraid that we will find that in fact there isn’t that much difference between us and them, the way they see the world and what they hope it will become, and the way we see it and what we hope for. Perhaps there’s a part of us that needs an enemy, that would find a world where everyone is on the same side more than a little unsettling.

More than anything, though, I think it’s the fear of discoving that we are wrong, that we need to alter our comfortable worldview to accommodate this new truth, that makes us recoil from true understanding. We prefer to understand in part, as long as it spares us the pain of understanding in full.

Let’s face it, there’s a lot we don’t know. And there’s a good probablility that a fair amount of what we think we know isn’t true at all. But even while most people will publicly or privately admit that they don’t know everything, not that many are willing to voluntarily venture out of their comfortable cave to discover things that might shake the foundations of their worldview. There’s too much fear, too much uncertainty and instability. And so we don’t genuinely try to understand one another.

This is especially true when two people discuss or debate an issue about which both care a great deal. Each will fire off stock arguments and responses like standard issue ammunition that can be easily loaded and expended with minor effort or expense. If either listens to the other at all, it’s with the goal of detecting a weakness or chink in the opponent’s armor, the better to exploit it. Here, extra effort goes into developing special-purpose weaponry that can wound or disable a particular opponent. But certainly neither is actually trying to understand why the other feels or thinks the way they do, much less trying to see things from their point of view.

And again, the reason is fear. When engaging in such a debate (particularly over issues that seem very important, for whatever reason), there’s always the gnawing fear that your opponent will come up with an argument you can’t counter – or, heaven forbid, you might actually discover they’re right!

The problem is that we’re too busy defending our turf, our pride, our identity, that we forget to care about the truth. So what if, after a serious debate, I discover that the truth of the matter happens to fall closer to “their” position than mine? Rather than be angry, I should be happy, because I learned from the exchange. When you look at it this way, they spent their time simply reiterating truth that they already understood for my benefit! Why, I should thank them from the bottom of my heart!

And we shouldn’t be worried that we’ll be hoodwinked or tricked into believing untruth. The way I see it, the truth doesn’t need to be coddled, protected, and kept in a bubble in order to survive. It can defend itself. And if you give the matter serious consideration and thought, the truth of it should become more evident over time. This doesn’t guarantee that the world will get simpler – on the contrary. But your wiser, more nuanced picture will be nearer the truth than what you originally believed.

Finally, to make a long post a little longer, I’ll toss in my two cents as to why it matters that we try and understand one another.  The key reason is this: understanding leads to love – genuine love. I think it’s hard to truly love something or someone that you don’t understand. I think it’s downright impossible not to love something or someone you truly understand. So in the name of love, let’s speak less and listen more. And let’s all open our hearts and our minds to what others are trying to tell us.

So what's the big idea? An introduction to this blog

First, some physics. Bear with me, I promise it will be brief and then I’ll get to the point (which is not physics) right away.

Physics, in many ways, is all about studying and understanding interactions. Objects in physics (and they can be anything – waves, particles, whatever) interact with one another. Otherwise, the universe would be static and boring, and there would be nothing worth studying in the first place. And there wouldn’t even be any means of studying it in the second place, since the only real way to learn about anything is to interact with it, or to observe it interact with its surroundings.

Interactions in physics involve some kind of exchange – usually an exchange of energy or momentum (although that’s really only the tip of the iceberg). Physicists now understand that all the forces that make the universe tick (think of gravity, electricity, etc) are in fact merely the result of interactions between objects. And these interactions take place through messenger particles carrying energy and momentum with them. In the case of the electro-magnetic force, the messenger is light itself: a single photon. 

People interact in much the same ways. People are ‘objects’ too, in this physics sense of the word: they interact with each other, exchange energy and momentum (and a whole lot more besides), and a lot can be learned about them by studying their interactions with others. The world is neither static nor boring – on the contrary, it is chock full of interaction. And nowhere is this more true than at the human level – the level of human interaction. And just like the principles of physics explain the interactions between physical objects, there should be principles that explain the interactions between people, or at that least help us understand them better.

As I’ve blundered my way through life, I have on occasion stumbled upon some of these principles. Some of them came through bursts of intuition. Most had been stewing subconsciously in my head for a long time before crystalizing. But being the fairly reserved, introverted person I am, I have largely kept them to myself – not because I was unwilling to share, but because I didn’t know how to do so. To be honest, I was (still am, actually) afraid others wouldn’t care at all about what I had discovered, or simply wouldn’t understand – not least because I struggle so much to communicate effectively.

Fortunately, (for me, and I hope for you too, in some way) I recently met a friend who both cares a great deal and expends great energy trying to understand – and believe me, it’s not easy. I struggle mightily to communicate things verbally that make sense to me on an intuitive level. When the last puzzle piece clicks into place it isn’t necessarily true that you can immediately turn the guy next to you and explain it. And even if you could, he would probably think you were pretty weird. Anyway, this wonderful friend both listens and tries to understand, and really does incredibly well in both respects. At the end of one particularly meaningful conversation (during which a lot of light was exchanged) she urged me to blog about some of this stuff. She said it was useless if it stayed cooped up in my head, and that there were more people out there than I realized who would appreciate and value it. I instantly knew she was right, so I decided to follow her advice.  

First though, an important disclaimer: I don’t consider myself very wise and don’t think I have a particularly firm grasp of life either. If anyone else out there has it figured out, pray tell. But if my experience in life has taught me anything it’s that even if someone were to let me in on all of life’s secrets it probably wouldn’t help me out all that much. Life is one of those things you have to experience for yourself to understand and for its lessons to mean anything to you.

What I mean to share here are the ingots of truth I have managed to smelt from the fairly boring ore of everyday life. And if there is anything of value here I don’t take any credit. I owe all the paltry wisdom I have accrued to my God. My heavenly father has loved me and nurtured my spirit for a very long time. If there is truth in anything I post here, the glory is all his.