From the Notebook....

FrA flood of golden leaves pour down,
And cover stone and grass and ground
Till all unseen seems to drown
Beneath that shower of Autumn.

I stand in a forest sparse and bare,
The trees are all shorn of leaf and color
The wind blows now with chilly air
And branches musically bounce together.

The deep, dark blue of the autumn sky,
Is fading now to a vacant grey,
Reluctantly, I turn aside; why
Did autumn have to go away?
Copyright - Curious Cognitive Content (CCC) - October 26, 2009

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)