Monday, March 31, 2008

Little Tugs

So when I was a missionary traipsing all over the Washington DC and Virginian landscape my mission president would frequently give us challenges to "follow little tugs"; read: the random thoughts, ideas or whatever that enter your daily inner dialog. He always said the "first thought is of God and second is of Man."

My companion and I committed to accept President's challenge and in an effort to more accurately listen to the Spirit and to make our days more interesting and we upped the stakes a little by making the challenge to each other to verbalize them as well. We thought it made them easier to follow if there were two brains working on the matter.

We found ourselves stopping the car frequently to get out and talk to someone that had passed us on the street, drop by member's houses with face painting kits and oatmeal, have 5 minute long belting renditions of "How Great Thou Art", and a number of other seemingly strange but didactic and useful missionary things that led to relationships, testimonies, and miracles. They're marvelous little things, those tugs.

However, this tendency leaked into normal, everyday conversation, not relating to The Work and as a result the concept of non-sequitur became quite-sequitur and led to many moments of sheer hilarity.

It's recently occurred to me how much I treasure those kind of moments where I am able to just pour out the random contents of my disjointed brain and have someone there to catch it all and make sense of it. Even if its in the form of my choreography to "Nephi's Courage" and obsession with the word "topo".

So - to carry it on a bit I've decided to make it a feature on my blog. Whatever piece of randomness I find noteworthy I will do my best to blog about and/or illustrate. You never know what it can mean or where it might lead.

Tug 1) parallel lines that spin in circles intersect in a 2D world but not a 3D one

Tug2) the word ubiquitous

Tug 3) this song -

2 comments:

Shelly! said...

What great advice from your mission pres. I love the notion of listening to that stirring that we all get sometimes - and making something of it!

It will be fun to see what else your tugs prompt you to do on the blog!

Love ya!

Mr. Hall said...

Liz, this is a great idea! I am looking forward to your "random blurbs" which I trust will be a nice balance between the brilliant and the conventional; between intellect and spirit; between wit and. . . well you get the idea!
Also, I must say, Midnight Oil--GREAT STUFF!!!