And another deep thought

Two days, two deep thought blogposts. Given the LDSVoices podcast I listened to today, I had to write about it. It was Elder Scott's opener for 2007 Education week, about teaching and learning by the spirit. I first heard this talk when I was in the MTC and was absolutely rivited. I heard it later during a BYU devotional, another time in General Conference, and now here again as part of education week. Amazing how important repetition is when learning spiritual things. You'd think with a message as direct as this, and a style as straighforward as Elder Scott employs, you'd only have to hear this once and you'd be set. But this is 4x for me, and I'm still struggling to apply it. Well here we go again. The gist of the talk is this, which Elder Scott refers to as "perhaps the most valuable gift I could ever give you, the most valuable piece of wisdom I could ever impart:

Throughout the remainder of my life, I will seek to learn by what I hear, see, and feel. I will write down the important things I learn and I will do them.

He then goes on to enumerate the blessings and insights that come when you show the spirit you are willing and ready to learn. The last 1/4 of the talk is a whole barrage of insights he's learned that he felt comfortable to share. He said he keeps most insights to himself in his own sacred, password-protected journal. Some he shares in his family journal, and some he feels prompted to share with others.

When it comes to journals, he said he's not concerned so much about keeping track of all the occurrances that happen on a daily basis, but he does everything he can to keep track of the most important and meaningful learnings and experiences he has. I call it the "small plates" method of journal keeping. In a way, that's really the driving purpose of keeping this blog active...to have a place for me to capture those essential thoughts and think a bit as I write them out.