Language

Have you ever been aware that you think in words? For instance, if you saw a dirty pillow that had to be washed, this recognition would probably not come as a vague impression on your mind, but rather as a sentence, "Gee, this pillow is dirty! I need to wash it!"

What would happen if you were deaf and blind - you had never read English and you had never heard English? Would you think in English? Would words actually be voiced in your thoughts?

I find it very hard for my mind to grasp the concept of thoughts using no words. I am sure that the very thing that makes one thought different from another thought is the way the thoughts are expressed with words in one's brain.

If this were the case, than a person with no knowledge of any spoken language might invent his own language and think in that! What would sound like gibberish to us would make total sense to him, because he has always thought in it!

And now I'm left speechless as I wonder at the gift of speech.....

Walking on a treadmill

There is nothing more discouraging than a day that doesn't seem to get anywhere. I call these the "treadmill-days." I sit down to do school, and I can't seem to make a dent in my pile of homework; I wash the dishes and ten minutes later there's fifteen cups ready for washing; etc.

Today was one of those days. It made me contemplate a real treadmill, one on which one runs and runs to get seemingly no where. And then it hit me; it was only seemingly no where. The person on the treadmill may not be moved through space, but he is moved through time. And if he is diligent to continue on the treadmill day after day, his muscles will slowly become firm and strong.

Those treadmill-days may be wearying, but they are the tools that slowly shape us into the person God wants us to be. If the man on the treadmill said, "Forget this! I'm going to go watch TV!" he might be content for a month or so, but a year later, he might look at himself, and say, "I'm fat! If I only had stuck to that stupid treadmill, I could be lifting boulders by now!"

Am I giving up? Am I busy watching TV instead of persevering in the seeming monotone of life? Could I be lifting boulders right now? The thoughts assailed my mind like bullets from a gun. Then a scripture softly pushed them aside to make itself prevalent.

"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up...." (Galatians 6:9)

9/11

September 11, 2001.

"Two planes just crashed in the the Twin Towers!" Mum broke the news to us as we sat at the dining room table working on school. She had just received a phone call from her mom, who got actual channels on her TV instead of snow storms.
My head looked up in amazement. I had no idea what the Twin Towers were then, but I was pretty certain that a tall white building we always passed on our way to Church was one of them. I couldn't even begin to guess what the second one was.
Mum tried adjusting our radio to a news channel, and as the static cleared away, we heard the grim voices of news reporters. A commercial popped on, I think for some sort of "zone alarm," but the station interrupted it, and its music fell flat. The radio station viewed this news as more important than its main source of income? Everyone knew at once (including stupid little me) that there would be no more school today.

The rest of the afternoon we spent over at my grandmother's house (the one with great TV reception), watching the news as it replayed the pancaking towers, over and over again. I remember seeing the plane crash into the tower, and I watched as the building melted down like paper mache in the rain. I was horrified when I learned that certain specks of flying material were actually people who had jumped from their windows in the hopes of escaping the approaching horror and doom.
I saw a battered fire engine and a melted ambulance, and I'll never forget the scene described by a reporter: walking through a river of blood that was thickened by bodies blown up beyond recognition or belief.

Sometimes silence is better than a carefully thought-out-and-phrased ending. I think now is one of those times.

.............................................

P.S. For anyone who was curious about the white building I mentioned in the first paragraph, I needn't have worried; it was a comparatively short nursing home quite a few hundred miles away from NYC. We pass by it every Sunday on our way to Church, and probably will for many Sundays to some (God willing).