Where I'm heading

 I don't know about you, but regularly blogging- or anything- is hard. Since I've been on social media the last nearly two decades, I've found I say many of the things I want to say I say there instead of here. I quit Facebook and instagram some time ago and have gone back for various reason, but again quit this past autumn. I realized some time ago that I was wasting so much time there and there was no way to get away from toxic things, like advertisements that seem to know everything about me (for the record, I don't believe that people *are* toxic, but when someone is described as such, it's because they make poor decisions and life choices and that YHWH can change anyone so I refrain from saying a person is or people are toxic). 

So here I am again, rereading my own blog posts and missing out on being able to capture my thoughts in full rather than little quips and shares. Does anyone else's words and memes ever completely reflect everything you want to say on a topic? I think I accepted things like that - trying to sum up what I want to say in a meme- because I've become a lazy thinker. Most of us have. Just go google "the decline of reading more than headlines" and you'll see what I mean. I noticed one day on twitter that a story someone tweeted had a specific headline but the story wasn't that at all. The headline was polarizingly  political in nature but the story wasn't even in the same direction the headline had portrayed. But I saw it tweeted several times with comments specifically with all the vitriol of people who had stopped at the headline but had no idea what the story was about. Scripture has something to say about that. 

I don't want to continue in that. I don't want hasty answers that have no depth or wisdom in them. I want to take the time to think about it, to consider, ponder, mull over, ruminate, contemplate, deliberate, analyze, evaluate, chew the cud, ..... I hope you see where I'm going with this. There are "slow food" and "slow fashion" movements, there ought to be a "wisdom" movement in us today. No one wise just jumps in and doesn't count the cost of their project.  Well maybe that's what's wrong today: we don't take the time to figure it out before committing to something big. We don't look at the whole picture at all. We skip the honest research and just go with how we feel. Even scholars today are lying to keep people placated and "in their place." 

So, I'm here. Ready to stop being lulled by a false sense of things and to take a good hard look and to pick things apart honestly and say what it is that I'm looking at. This isn't just a post about my own need for slowing down to become genuine, but the desire to see it in others as well. I hope to only pursue great as opposed to just good things. I don't suppose this means I'll become all serious and no fun, but I certainly don't want to go into middle age (I may already be middle aged according to some ideas about that) without being able to discern and make wise choices. Some things are made for me already but many choices are still my own. 

I hope to return to the series I started last spring about the plants and how we have learned about them. I hope you'll have plenty to read and ponder here. In the meantime, here's a link to a previous post from my old blog.