Repetition @ MindSay 
What do you do?
If you keep stumbling over something, do you pick it up to look at it? Kick it aside? Continue to ignore it and thus keep stumbling? Examine it from your vaunted height to gain perspective?
How do you approach something like that?
How do you approach something like that?
Haven't we heard this already? Yep.
"Now remember to look both ways before crossing the street."
"Don't run with scissors!"
These, and a hundred others, I'm sure, are sayings -- teachings, if you like -- that we have heard often. A great deal. A LOT. Hopefully, most of us learned their wisdom while we were yet children. Parents, caregivers and teachers repeated these teachings frequently for two reasons. The first was that children are very unlikely to learn anything after only one run-through (unless that run-through was a painful experience). The second is that what was being taught was important. Enough so that someone is willing to repeat themselves however often it is necessary to make sure that the lesson has been heard and, hopefully, internalized.
The learner might not see the need to hear about it so often. He might think that looking both ways is foolish, because it takes time and the ball is rolling...rolling...rolling... Just go get it, right? And what's wrong with tailgating, anyway. Isn't it more important to make our presence known to the driver in front of us so that they'll go faster...? And how many children did not listen to that last one up there and wound up desperately uncomfortable -- or embarrassed! -- because they didn't heed the teaching?
What if these were lessons that were thought to cause embarrassment? Conflict? Problems? "We don't want to teach Janet not to run with those scissors. Isn't it more important that she's learning to play with others?" Janet might, after all, throw a tantrum when told not to run with scissors. Oh, dear. We don't want that now, do we ?
All of which is to say that there are times that lessons must be taught repeatedly. The "feelings" of the learners are overshadowed by the importance of the message. The Lord God must have felt this way about many things, for he made sure to repeat himself over and over in his love for us and his wish for us to know him and to understand him. To live lives pleasing to him. To avoid punishment when possible. To be safe from damnation and to live forever with him in Heaven.
For God, it is important enough that many of his chosen spokesmen have been given a word on the subject of the Day of the Lord. This Day is held to be many things, but primarily it is a day of God's judgment on his creation.
In the thirteenth chapter of the book of Isaiah, the prophet is preaching concerning Babylon. Yes, there was a Babylon "in those days" but for God, Babylon is synonymous with the city that the Ruler will take over in the last days of the world as we know it. So what is said then could be true about the future as well.
The Day of the Lord will be horrible. Destructive. Isaiah says that men should wail because it is near. Not weep, not mourn, but wail -- a loud, throat-busting cry of anguish. Men will be terrified, he goes on to say. Hearts will melt in sheer fright. They will be in pain and writhe with it.
Wrath and anger. But for God, this is not a knee-jerk response. Remember that, when it happens. God has a planned response for the disobedience of his people. And we have been warned, repeatedly, because God loves us. Passionately. He wants us to look both ways, see that he is coming, and be careful with how we live so that we will have no further cause for alarm.
If it were not important to God, he would not have spoken so often of the Day of the Lord. The next few weeks, (I think?), will be spent seeing where else he has used this particular phrase and why it is important for us to learn about the Day of the Lord.
It's not just a history lesson. God wants us to learn from it so that we can live more profitably and be prepared. So listen to your Father.
"Say please!" Paired with: "Say thank you!"
"Don't tailgate."
"Don't run with scissors!"
And of course, the ever-popular: "Make sure to go before we leave!"
These, and a hundred others, I'm sure, are sayings -- teachings, if you like -- that we have heard often. A great deal. A LOT. Hopefully, most of us learned their wisdom while we were yet children. Parents, caregivers and teachers repeated these teachings frequently for two reasons. The first was that children are very unlikely to learn anything after only one run-through (unless that run-through was a painful experience). The second is that what was being taught was important. Enough so that someone is willing to repeat themselves however often it is necessary to make sure that the lesson has been heard and, hopefully, internalized.
The learner might not see the need to hear about it so often. He might think that looking both ways is foolish, because it takes time and the ball is rolling...rolling...rolling... Just go get it, right? And what's wrong with tailgating, anyway. Isn't it more important to make our presence known to the driver in front of us so that they'll go faster...? And how many children did not listen to that last one up there and wound up desperately uncomfortable -- or embarrassed! -- because they didn't heed the teaching?
What if these were lessons that were thought to cause embarrassment? Conflict? Problems? "We don't want to teach Janet not to run with those scissors. Isn't it more important that she's learning to play with others?" Janet might, after all, throw a tantrum when told not to run with scissors. Oh, dear. We don't want that now, do we ?
All of which is to say that there are times that lessons must be taught repeatedly. The "feelings" of the learners are overshadowed by the importance of the message. The Lord God must have felt this way about many things, for he made sure to repeat himself over and over in his love for us and his wish for us to know him and to understand him. To live lives pleasing to him. To avoid punishment when possible. To be safe from damnation and to live forever with him in Heaven.
For God, it is important enough that many of his chosen spokesmen have been given a word on the subject of the Day of the Lord. This Day is held to be many things, but primarily it is a day of God's judgment on his creation.
Isaiah 13:6 Wail, for the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty.
In the thirteenth chapter of the book of Isaiah, the prophet is preaching concerning Babylon. Yes, there was a Babylon "in those days" but for God, Babylon is synonymous with the city that the Ruler will take over in the last days of the world as we know it. So what is said then could be true about the future as well.
The Day of the Lord will be horrible. Destructive. Isaiah says that men should wail because it is near. Not weep, not mourn, but wail -- a loud, throat-busting cry of anguish. Men will be terrified, he goes on to say. Hearts will melt in sheer fright. They will be in pain and writhe with it.
Isaiah 13:9 See, the day of the Lord is coming --a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger-- to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it.
Wrath and anger. But for God, this is not a knee-jerk response. Remember that, when it happens. God has a planned response for the disobedience of his people. And we have been warned, repeatedly, because God loves us. Passionately. He wants us to look both ways, see that he is coming, and be careful with how we live so that we will have no further cause for alarm.
If it were not important to God, he would not have spoken so often of the Day of the Lord. The next few weeks, (I think?), will be spent seeing where else he has used this particular phrase and why it is important for us to learn about the Day of the Lord.
It's not just a history lesson. God wants us to learn from it so that we can live more profitably and be prepared. So listen to your Father.
Groundhog Day?
Am I condemned to repeat this moment over and over again? Will every romantic relationship I have from now on follow the same progression? Or am I extrapolating too far, panicking early...?
Drifting...Hurt
I am feeling pretty good tonight so i am going to share something deeply personal...
I have a song in my head that keeps repeating itself over and over...wont stop.
I cant complain to much, at least its a good one.
...
what have i become, my sweetest friend...
everyone i know,goes away in the end...
you can have it all, my empire of dirt
i will let you down, i will make you hurt...
...
i used to think of this song when i felt alone...back before
i reclaimed myself...i did nothing to be what i knew i was capable of. Everyone that i loved did not hear me ask for help...
I tried to kill myself...that is how dark my life was...
wasted life it would have been too...my husband ruined me.
it took entirely too long to remember that i was
not all the things he said i was...a victim begins to believe the abuser...this is one of the examples of how trents music inspired me to start over...
at the end of this song, he sings:
if i could start again, a million miles away...
i would keep myself, i would find a way...
...
no matter how bad it got for him, he didn't take the easy way out.
I betrayed my gift of life and tried to commit suicide.
i lived in a dark apartment by myself for a year hiding in my despair. a waste...i am glad that i didn't succeed.
i can never again look at that as an option.
i didn't pull out of it until my "old" friends brought me some music, all kinds of genres and i sat in my dark hole and listened all day and night for a few more weeks...then my oldest friend from junior high brought me the downward spiral because someone stole all of my cds, and i listened to hurt...it combined all of the things i had been feeling and then said at the end that there are other choices...you have to find a way.
this is not a depressing blog...i am glad to be alive and well,
when i spoke in an earlier blog about being touched by music or a specific song, this is one of them that did it for me.
this was a very personal experience to me...
i am glad i told someone finally.
my family didn't even know that i did this to myself,
thats how much they cared.
and an explanation is given as to why i relate to music,
it was many years before i could relate to people.
goodnight all.
n
kyrie eleison
Kyrie eleison....
I remembered that long, flowing call today as the most non sequitur interjection amid screaming children, chattering bimbos, and elevator music. Stuck amid piles of strewn purses, trash, belts, bras, and more purses, and trying uselessly to pick them up only to be flung down again, and babies are not just crying but grating against your eardrum in a scream similar to that of a victim of a large knife, I basically wanted to shove a firebomb up the ass of anyone who asked me anything. A lot of the time at work I'm angrier than a bat out of hell...my innards raging at the utter mundaneness of picking things up off the floor while rednecks throw them down again and wonder where the cash registers are (try the front of the store, Buckwheat.) And then a girl came by and starting pushing my rail full of bras careening down the aisle and I literally wanted to tell her to bite the curb, bitch, and then stomp on her head, shattering her leering white teeth, those of a cheshire cat on her little black face. And mostly I was angry at myself, for not having written when I promised myself I would and why the fuck was I here hanging bras with little pink lacings on fucking cute hangers? And then between the buzz of automated voices and crowdchatter and questions it came like a silken ghost, Kyrie eleison...
I hadn't had much inspiration lately, and I thought I was never going to force myself to letters again. I realized, with the memory of this sweet entreaty of monk voices, that I never have written anything about my experience at the monastery in this journal.
It's interesting because the monastery retreat came with so many synchronicities. It was there, surrounded by the cherished phrases of the monk's chants, I started Ulysses, which started itself with the monkish Buck Mulligan and his latin interjections, the repetitions of Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy
Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world
without end, Amen, like my wheeling rhymes, they turn and return. And then, that call again which raised, too, in the mind of Bloom, sweet incantation: Kyrie eleison...Lord have mercy.
When you hear chants repeated, songs resung day in, day out, your heart absorbs them. Something about them never leaves you. Even if it's only for a couple of days that they are continually sung, they enter you. It's because of this that even at my farthest points from God, where my mind has totally forgotten and is at aphelion, that I can still be connected by the string of lyric floating from my subconcious. I have remembered it randomly walking down the street, getting on the bus. Milling about as repetitive as the chants themselves but it is a reminder that the repetition, like this one, must not all be meaningless. It is just another wheel, turning and turning.
And I realize I never wrote about the monastery because it was too overwhelming, too much at once. It was indescribable. Another synchronicity is that I wrote a poem about a wheel while I was there. Another synchronicity is that Michael had shown me a glimpse of God with his story and only days after, I was asked if I wanted to join some club members on a retreat to the Trappist monastery of Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.
I never showed you pictures, or words. But the throw back of Kyrie Eleison, the call they sang today, yesterday, the day before, and will sing forever, for everyone, reminds me that I need to. I can't forget that. Not like every other day that seems so dreadfully the same as the others. But the monks were the happiest people I have ever seen, and their days are among the most repetitive on Earth. And that is another thing worth remembering. It is not the circles in which we walk, it is the center which we circle.
My center has always been love, and with Michael's help I realized that it was not the right love I was looking for. No person can ever fulfill me. And that's why what's playing now is Bob Dylan. It ain't me, babe. It ain't me you're looking for, babe.
So over the next few days I'll be giving you what I wrote in my journal during my stay. I doubt I'll be able to scratch the surface, but it is a wellspring of inspiration, and lately I thought I had lost my will.
It's funny how I'm reminded by God.
Now I'm going to go to bed. And as the monks would say each night after they sang their song to the candlelit Mary, "Give us a restful night and a peaceful death."
Kyrie eleison....
I remembered that long, flowing call today as the most non sequitur interjection amid screaming children, chattering bimbos, and elevator music. Stuck amid piles of strewn purses, trash, belts, bras, and more purses, and trying uselessly to pick them up only to be flung down again, and babies are not just crying but grating against your eardrum in a scream similar to that of a victim of a large knife, I basically wanted to shove a firebomb up the ass of anyone who asked me anything. A lot of the time at work I'm angrier than a bat out of hell...my innards raging at the utter mundaneness of picking things up off the floor while rednecks throw them down again and wonder where the cash registers are (try the front of the store, Buckwheat.) And then a girl came by and starting pushing my rail full of bras careening down the aisle and I literally wanted to tell her to bite the curb, bitch, and then stomp on her head, shattering her leering white teeth, those of a cheshire cat on her little black face. And mostly I was angry at myself, for not having written when I promised myself I would and why the fuck was I here hanging bras with little pink lacings on fucking cute hangers? And then between the buzz of automated voices and crowdchatter and questions it came like a silken ghost, Kyrie eleison...
I hadn't had much inspiration lately, and I thought I was never going to force myself to letters again. I realized, with the memory of this sweet entreaty of monk voices, that I never have written anything about my experience at the monastery in this journal.
It's interesting because the monastery retreat came with so many synchronicities. It was there, surrounded by the cherished phrases of the monk's chants, I started Ulysses, which started itself with the monkish Buck Mulligan and his latin interjections, the repetitions of Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy
Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world
without end, Amen, like my wheeling rhymes, they turn and return. And then, that call again which raised, too, in the mind of Bloom, sweet incantation: Kyrie eleison...Lord have mercy.
When you hear chants repeated, songs resung day in, day out, your heart absorbs them. Something about them never leaves you. Even if it's only for a couple of days that they are continually sung, they enter you. It's because of this that even at my farthest points from God, where my mind has totally forgotten and is at aphelion, that I can still be connected by the string of lyric floating from my subconcious. I have remembered it randomly walking down the street, getting on the bus. Milling about as repetitive as the chants themselves but it is a reminder that the repetition, like this one, must not all be meaningless. It is just another wheel, turning and turning.
And I realize I never wrote about the monastery because it was too overwhelming, too much at once. It was indescribable. Another synchronicity is that I wrote a poem about a wheel while I was there. Another synchronicity is that Michael had shown me a glimpse of God with his story and only days after, I was asked if I wanted to join some club members on a retreat to the Trappist monastery of Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.
I never showed you pictures, or words. But the throw back of Kyrie Eleison, the call they sang today, yesterday, the day before, and will sing forever, for everyone, reminds me that I need to. I can't forget that. Not like every other day that seems so dreadfully the same as the others. But the monks were the happiest people I have ever seen, and their days are among the most repetitive on Earth. And that is another thing worth remembering. It is not the circles in which we walk, it is the center which we circle.
My center has always been love, and with Michael's help I realized that it was not the right love I was looking for. No person can ever fulfill me. And that's why what's playing now is Bob Dylan. It ain't me, babe. It ain't me you're looking for, babe.
So over the next few days I'll be giving you what I wrote in my journal during my stay. I doubt I'll be able to scratch the surface, but it is a wellspring of inspiration, and lately I thought I had lost my will.
It's funny how I'm reminded by God.
Now I'm going to go to bed. And as the monks would say each night after they sang their song to the candlelit Mary, "Give us a restful night and a peaceful death."
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