Trial by Fire
In a conversation I was having with a young adult, I recently asked the individual what they valued the most. He told me several specific things, including family members, friends, car, and relationship with God. I proceeded to ask, by what measure do you order those values. How do you separate the things you listed from the others. I expected one of several different answers that I typically get from that specific question—something about "what you spend your money on defines what you value." Another is along the lines of, "what do you devote your time to." These propositions indicate that if we charted our spending or time, we would find our values hierarchy.
This young man not much younger than I turned to me after thinking for a brief moment and said, "What you devote your mind to."
After thinking about this for a long while, I became more aware of what my mind was devoting itself to throughout the day. I've started journaling as a devotional practice, but I have soon realized that the value of writing down my thoughts at the end of the day was ordering my values before my very eyes. The things that I value are the thoughts that I allow to live in my mind. Something that I see as important enough to grapple with throughout struggle and discomfort.
Throughout my journal, I can go back and find unfinished songs on many of the pages. Bits of poetry, which were my attempt to sort out ontology, relationship, and purpose in raw language, can be likened to puzzle pieces created in non-conjoining shapes. No present hope of joining those pieces unless they were cut again, into shapes that could accurately represent my worldview at that time.
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, a clinical psychologist, writer, and professor who has taught much about this topic, once said in a lecture in Syndey, Australia, that "Poetry is the birthplace of thought." I think that he is right in many ways, which is why when I started my journey into intentional mental growth, I started trying to write poetry. It's not good poetry at all, but it gives me a baseline to then work it into a coherent idea.
When I was working in Yosemite, CA, I encountered a blacksmith working on a metal piece. I witnessed him take a square block of steel and begin to break it down into something useful. He began striking the glowing metal after heating the steel, causing flakes to fall to the floor. As he continued this process, more and more bits of steel would fall and be discarded, leaving the piece that much closer to being useful. I stood there for more than an hour, watching the process from block to blade.
What was once a harmless block of steel barely worthy of being a bookend became an axehead capable of felling a tree. But it was at a cost that it was formed to its potential.
After the work was almost done, the ground was littered with metal fragments, discarded after being separated from the glowing steel. The way we see the world and order the values in it can be applied to that smelting process.
We have raw poetry, which is our outlet to spew out verbiage into space without the baggage of literary rules. That can be put into the fire of thought. Pounded, crushed, and refined into something that resembles a useful and presentable system of beliefs and observations. Things that push us to live with conviction.
This is why we at the Noble Initiative stress the need to write things down. Put your thoughts on paper, and process them into something useful. As God's children, we all possess the ability to create and develop beauty into a world possessed by chaos and malevolence.
Let's act on that with conviction, looking deeply at what we believe, and refine it into a testimony we can be assured of. Consider the possible values of journaling in your personal walk with God.