Here we go. Now this is an old-fashioned telegram.

A lot of my thought life recently has been simply contemplating the process of thinking... meditating, analyzing, processing, whatever you want to call it. Stop. (Sounds extremely exciting, huh?)

It's really not half as boring as it sounds, and I have found that a simple intro to extrospective pause to let the mind process, imagine, and understand can offer a delightful rest from commercialized, habitual, highway-speed thought-processing. Stop. Sometimes I feel as if my day to day is like the passing of waves or the double exposure of a photograph, where I see and experience them fully, but when thinking back, I often forget the details and remember only a transparent recollection of the whole. Stop.

I've had a goal this summer to read 20 books in my 3 months away from college just to learn, relax, and ultimately be engaged and entertained by the wisdom and stories of others (I'm actually a little more than halfway through at 13 now if you were curious). Stop. This reading discipline has helped to break away from the aformentioned pattern in the previous paragraph, in that it encourages the meditating on details, specifics, ideas, and creative concepts in order to gain a more vivid description and understanding of the characters, philosophies, settings, etc. letting your mind reel, imagine, process, and apply (a sort of stopping to smell the roses approach). Stop. And so this pause, or stop, has encouraged, at best, a re-focused mindset with multiplied perspective in life, and at worst, the same only applied to literature. Stop.

Perhaps this is why the Psalmists so often praise the practice of meditation upon the Word of God. Stop. It makes you think. It helps you understand. It offers deeper understanding (and hopefully appreciation) of the vast, mysterious, and simply awesome character of God, a renewing of the mind, and an imprint on practical thinking throughout the day to day. Triple Stop. (I find adding 'stop' after every sentence gets kind of old after awhile, although it does in turn get across the whole point of this introspective entry).

Tim Keller offered a personal challenge for the Bible-studying individual the last time I witnessed him speak. His challenge was to read one chapter from the Bible each day, take one verse from that chapter to meditate on, and then come up with 50 lessons that can be learned (based around the context of course) from that one verse. At my best, in the span of two hours, I was able to come up with only 36 before I gave up on the completion of this challenge. My regular goal to shoot for, in my typical daily 30-60 minutes of reading, has been about 15.

Now why spend all this time on one verse, you may ask? Well, I find myself so much more engaged in the text when I have this time to traverse a singular verse, word by word, in cognizant repetition. It's like a high-speed awakening coming from the stillness of rested thought or the repetitive revving of the mind's motor during an intentional shift to neutral. Overall, there is so much more to be grasped, in my opinion, when simply pausing and taking time to think and reflect this way. Stop.

The pause or stop in the rapid momentum in study or in the regular 24 has been something I've been definitely learning the value of this summer. It's fun. It's engaging. And, I think there's much to be learned when finding a stillness or rest in the metaphorical thunderstorm.

Over and out.