I ought to be cleaning my inbox right now. It has not been cleaned in a Lot of Months.
I ought to be reading something edifying.
I ought to working on my embroidery project.
I ought to be researching for my thesis.
Buuuuutttt I promised Riley that I would do my verybest to write 10,000 words in the month of July, and it is now July 8, and I have written approximately zero (unless we are counting emails, texts, and Facebook messages).
The truth is, I haven't written much of anything in English since I wrote my last Russia blog post a month and a half ago, and I haven't written anything very thoughtful/intelligent/halfway-academic since all of those final papers in December.
This is not to say that the thing I am writing right now is very thoughtful/intelligent, but it is meant to set me on a sort of trajectory. To set out a goal, at least, because I love goals and can't really function without them.
This summer I do not plan to write essays about/inspired by every book I read. My reading is far too scattered (and my reactions too embarrassing) for that to work out now. The focus of this summer is a little different, anyway. I'm at school, working five part-time jobs, surrounded by people I love and within not-too-distant reach of other people I also love, and most of all trying to find a suitable bridesmaid dress. You would be surprised at how much time and emotional energy the latter pursuit demands. But none of those are truly good subjects for blog posts, so I'm looking a little deeper, and also higher: God.
Okay, most likely theology.
There is a difference between writing about God and writing about theology. The first often is theology, as it is "a study of God," but to write about theology would have to be something like theologyology, or "a study of studies of God."
Currently, I am reading a good bit of theology. Some Tim Keller here. Some John Calvin there. Some Catechism of the Catholic Church on the side. And everywhere I look I am confronted with and fascinated by the way people understand God, and the way that understanding changes them.
And that, dear readers (if you are existent anymore), is my plan for the next few weeks. I will probably not get to 10,000 words, which is okay, but I might get a handful of useful ones out, and that will be good at least for my thinking if not for anybody else's.
Topics on the Dock:
- The flesh. Because I seem to have it.
- Modesty. That is, the virtue.
- Prayer. Especially the extemporaneous kind.
- (whatever comes next in The Institutes)
