Coinsidence, I Think Not

Sunday was my ward conference and the stake president was the last one to speak. He quoted a poem at the end of his talk. As I listened to just a portion of the poem I wrote down the title not remembering or hearing the author's name, so that I could read it later. Then later this week as I was going through more of the poems I was assigned to read there it was, the poem that I heard a day earlier in church, The Lamb, by Blake.
As I read the poem I pictured a mother telling this poem to a young child as a bed time story. I love how it brings up such huge questions, cosmic questions, and yet its meant to be understood by all ages. I also love how a lot of the examples or questions that are presented can be taken in a personal childlike way. You could replace the word lamb for child or son. Every child is a child of God and its a very easy way to associate that principle with this poem by replacing the word. It brings God to a level that the reader can understand. The poem compares Him with us mere mortals.
In a way I could see this poem being taken from Psalms in the Bible. I think it would fit very nicely. After all it was meant to be song.

Robin Hood and Little John

As I celebrated MLKJ Day I watched Disney's Robin Hood. And as I watched I realized that I can use the teachings of BYU anywhere and in anything. As I watched I commented to my roommie how the hierarchy of the positions matched the food chain of the animals. Darwinism was right there disguised as a fun child's movie for all to love.
As I continued to watch and listen I found the words to be quite witty, so witty that a child would have missed the context completely. As I watched I thought of all the underlined morals, themes and messages that were being poured onto the screen. I started analyzing every little thing and realized that here I was Monday night picking apart and critically thinking about a Disney movie. What has happened? Sure I still enjoyed it for what it was and for the laughter, the songs, and the little rabbits with their adorable accents, but now I was seeing it in a new light.
Is this what BYU does to us? And now that I think of it, I was analyzing other movies, and books and stories that I read and watched in the past few days. It seemed as though I was taking our class activity of Dancing Through the Decades to another level, which included movies, scriptures and books. Will I ever be able to enjoy just reading a book or watching a movie for sheer pleasure? Of course, but now I can peel away the layers of what has been written and use some critical theory to broaden my horizons.

Fighting with the Cursor

Why is it, that whenever I take the time to sit and write out my thoughts all I see is a sheet of white paper in my mind? I had a teacher that would say, "Always write. Write long, write short, write fast, write slow, write at night, write in the morning, write on your couch, write under a tree, write about sad things, write about happy things, write about colors, or people, or cars, or classes, friends or family, far off countries or your own hometown, but just write."
Easy for him to say. Sometimes I'll sit with my fingers softly touching the keys of my Cherry red laptop and wait for something to write about. I'll begin a sentence and then immediately hit the backspace button until I'm back where I started. A blank box with a blinking cursor laughing, almost mocking me for not being able to write. "I thought you wanted to be a writer?" it says, "I thought you wanted your voice out there for all to hear?" And so, to prove the cursor wrong, I try again only to repeatedly hit the backspace as before.
Sometimes, I admit, the cursor wins the battle , and I close out of my blog with nothing posted, no insight to share, no thoughts forever recorded in cyberspace. But I'm proud to admit that even though this is a bunch of nothingness that I have written, at least it's written. Point for me.