Writing

After a long blank, I got a writing idea. The idea came to me in the way comedians get their jokes ... from irritation. I found myself uncomfortable with people commenting on pictures of sunsets with statements such as 'When you see this, how can you not believe in God?'  The urge to write comes with my irritation and my puzzlement over my own irritation. I believe in God and I enjoy sunsets, so why am I bothered?

I wrote my first response longhand (to keep me away from the computer). After I revise, I'll post it here.

Re: feelings

Oh yes. Feelings I'm finding to be difficult and related ideas:

"I don't have what I want. " I can learn to live "without" things. Extra clothes, extra luxuries, extra food ... things that give me status.

Balkiness. Comes from the idea : "i might get rejected, so why bother?" I've got a stack of school system applications to fill out. I also get ticked off because they are all different, so each one takes hours to fill out. New idea: I do have the time because I'm a week ahead on my coursework. This is just another form of coursework.

Two of the most powerful facets in the realm of thought are ideas and images. Ideas are ways of thinking about and interpreting things. They are so essential to how we approach life that we often do not understand when and how ideas are at work. Our idea system grows up with us from childhood out of the teachings, expectations, and behaviors of family and community. People are often so far in the grip of ideas that they can't be bothered to think. They don't know what moves them, but ideas govern them and have their consequences anyway.

Examples of ideas are freedom, education, happiness, "the American Dream," the feminine or masculine, and so on. To see ideas in action, look closely at artistic endeavors, especially movies and music, which encapsulate most of the pop culture, and at efforts to persuade, especially politics and commercials. Look, for example at the place freedom\, a major idea now, plays in automobile ads and rock lyrics.

One task of spiritual formation is to have our ideas transformed. By the Spirit, we replace in ourselves those idea systems of evil with the idea system that Jesus Christ embodied and taught. p. 68, Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice by Dallas Willard and Jan Johnson