Saturday, 11 July 2009

• Journey Learning

  Previously, on Joe's Life and Words, I was talking about "readwalking" and creativity and sunsets and wikis.  Now, for the conclusion of my walkin' 'round...
  
  I did see hot air balloons at Noelridge (3), but I was so engrossed in the creativityness that I let them go on their ESE-rly way and kept reading.  When I was done making my ideas stick, I drove over to Ellis Park and switched books.  More Merton journals.  Merton and Ellis go well together.
  
  I'm up to about 1958 or so now.  I noticed a peculiar thing between 1953 and 1957.  In 1953, Merton is positively gushing about how wonderful it is to be in a hermitage, in complete solitude, about how he can be one with God there more than anywhere else, how he would love to just live in that solitude all the time, etc.
  
  But by 1957, he's telling a different story. He's talking more about politics, more about what's going on in the world, more about being involved.  He's talking more about how to know and understand God we must understand Him in part through the community of the Church and also thorough the community of the human race.  That's quite a turnaround.  But it's consistent of what I know of Merton -- that he was a believer in solitude, but he also realized that being part of the community was important too -- "no man is an island."
  
  What I find highly intriguing, though, is the progressing. The journey.  I've begun to realize that many (if not all) of the other Merton books I've read are snapshots.  To start with I just read the books and figured they were "Merton's beliefs".  But that's simplistic.  They are his thoughts and beliefs at a certain point in his journey.  Is it okay to lump them all together?  Maybe.  But by looking at these journals, it sorta opens up a new level of things, because I realize that his views were not constant for his 30 years or so of writing.
  
  Well duh.  No one's views are completely fixed.  If they were, it would probably be a sign of stagnation rather than growth.  So... most non-fiction books are written as snapshots I suppose, "Here's what I think about...sticky ideas", to name a relevant topic from today.  But I wonder if that leaves something to be desired.  Could it be that a book (or writing, or whatever) that shows the progression of thought would be at once more interesting and easier to follow than something that just dumps out the endstate product?
  
  This thought reminded me of blogs.  Blogs can obviously show the progression of ideas over time, at least in one person's mind.  Blogs are really the same as journals, except for the public/private thing.  The more I think about it, the more value I find in blogs. Especially on the increase is my understanding of the value of blogs at work.  Even on work-related topics, employees and managers have things to say, and being able to follow that train of thought as it progresses is valuable, I think.  And a blog makes such progression visible in ways that doesn't really happen otherwise.  (It's tricky to decide how much information should be blogged, but that's way too deep for this entry.)
  
  Anyway...anyway...anyway... I'm learning the value of journey, and particularly of watching that journey transpire in the lives of others.  It's easy to see in Merton, cuz his years go by in a few pages of reading.  For the rest of us, it's harder to see the change and the steps of the journey, but slowly, slowly, the pages are turning, we are becoming "who we are meant to be", and learning, and dreaming, and watching the boats on the sunset-sky-mirroring water, and all that good stuff.
  

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