Random Thoughts with the sound of the clock clicking in the background

Not bad three “Random Thoughts …” blog posts in a row. Will catch up on the project 365 pictures later. I think it does help to get the fingers warmed up for ongoing writing thus far.

The journey from the head to the hands to the keyboard to the computer screen, I noticed can be quite a long one. It was nice day dreaming about my assignment paper the last week. And it was loads of fun living in the theoretical world, but at the end of the day, it’s when those floating thoughts reach the paper is when it’s more “real” if you like. 😛

It was an awesome feeling to have the kids run to welcome me home today. You could almost add some background music when you heard their giggles travel to the air. Then in slow motion one by one they leaped towards me. Well, not quite slow motion. 🙂 The giggles traveled to the neighbors too loud and clear.

Whenever I manage to tell them the Rat King story, I need to cook up more and more plots to keep their attention. The kids kind of know there’s some allegory in the story, and it’s loads of fun. Gareth has been adding his own twists and turns to help me out which was fun. But then Elysia might think it’s best for Papa to have authorial control over the direction of the narrative. Ewan just enjoys himself. And we’ll need to include Anja too, because she’s very much part of our journey even if she’s not listening directly to the adventures.

Which leads me to ponder the way I’m crafting my research design day and night. There also a nice existential personal dimension in all this academic research. I won’t want it to over take the more rigorous work. But it’s nice to pay attention to it. Those reflections might not land up substantially in the pages of the final “report” but then it might land up here or at least in my “resurrected” now freshly named “Sabbath Journal” to harmonize with my “Sabbath Albums”.

I was told that I was making loads of music during my sleep last night. I never saw myself as a sleep-trumpeting individual, but then again I was zonked out yesterday. It’s already 10:08pm right now, and the sky is still quite bright. I’m still getting used to sleeping before the sun really goes down. Friends remind me that winter it’s a different story. We’ll savor the present.:-)

How do “traditions” reinvent themselves? How do communities reflect on how they relate to the past, live in the present and chart the future? How do we make sense of our location here, and what goes on not “here” but “there”? How do we have some “constants” in the changing “contexts” of our lives?

Nice to throw these questions out. Because, so much of what we say and how we respond is basically negotiating the potential answers to these questions.

I was reflecting on a particular “theme” in theology the last couple of days. And sometimes it seems to me that after all the noise of theological erudition and philosophical sophistication, the underlying political maneuvering, and even “silencing” of the “other” is very real. It’s hard not to slip into that which you criticize. One moves from a former position, then to a more nuanced position, or even breaking with the first one, only to land up having the same attitude or ethos on where we started.

This is particularly true when the attention is on securing one’s identity. Aren’t we all worried that we might lose our identity with the onslaught of so much outside of us? But then the irony maybe that we truly find our identity in the process of losing it. Then our identity which is never really that stable and fixed after all, either retreats into a more hardened mold, or reemerges to a more flexible mold. But that’s scary sometimes to ourselves, but perhaps more to others who tend to remember us in one mold.

Ah .. the joys of these random thoughts 🙂 Speaking somewhat in the abstract or generalized statements, but all in actual fact grounded in concrete and particular stories. There’s a place to describe more. But it’s not now. The value for the eavesdropper (hi!) is that the feeble words become symbols where you can reflect on them based on your own situation.It’s up to you how you appropriate it.

So, this apparent monologue is actually a dialogue. 🙂

It’s time for silence and sleep. Talk must cease even if the thoughts don’t stop so easily.

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Location:Gimleveien,Kristiansand,Norway