Metathoughts, or Where am I Going in this Handbasket???

The simplest definition of "meta-thinking" (albeit imprecise) could be thinking about what you are thinking about. How often do I do that? Not as much as I would like to or should. Sometimes I think after I do something and that's definitely the wrong way 'round altogether. As Celie in The Color Purple said,

"Well, us talk and talk about God, but I’m still adrift...I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?)..."

And Shug Avery's reply:

"More than anything God love admiration...No, not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off when you walk by the colour purple in a field and don't notice it...Everything wanna be loved. Us sing and dance, and holla just wanting to be loved. Look at them trees. Notice how the trees do everything people do to get attention... except walk?"

I'm certain that is not the way it's supposed to be. God made the world for us to notice and love it just as He does us. Today, I almost held up traffic to stare at a rainbow. It was a gorgeous quarter-arc of brilliant color slicing through clouds of various shades of grey, blue-grey and white. Then, on my way home, I just wanted to pull off the road and stare at the clouds. They piled over each other and blew in the wind across some of the most brilliantly blue sky I've seen in a while; sprinkled rain and turned silver in the sunlight.

But in all my admiration for the clouds and rainbow, I just now realize I never once thought about the One who created that. Why?

Because my mind is filled with all manner of things except what is truly important. I spent the past couple of days thinking about the things that are important. About priorities and hierarchies that I want to observe and teach my son to observe. Yet here in my own life I realize I did not recognize the true importance of the dazzling display in the sky that so captivated me on my way home.

That I believe in one God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, and it is meet and right to worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, at all times and in all places bowing down before Him and singing the triumphal hymn, "Holy Holy Holy!"

Instead of a miracle of light and water and air, I notice clouds and some random act of physics that is pretty and transient but essentially of no import compared to leaving work, getting to the grocery store, fighting traffic to get home, balancing the checkbook, folding laundry, etc etc etc ad nauseum ad infinitum.

I am...unquiet...inside. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.

I am reading some of the works of St Theophan the Recluse now and, while I've never read him before, his words are familiar. So many of the saints have said the same thing: the spirit must control the soul/mind or else it will always be disquieted and unsatisfied. It will not focus on anything but satisfying it's own myriad and infinite carnal needs/desires but nothing carnal can fulfill it because what is truly desired is a spiritual satisfaction. The soul only knows what is important when the spirit is strong enough to rein it in.

My spirit needs some training. I'm thinking she is getting somewhat, well, flabby. I've lost my peace many times lately for many reasons that I really should not. Reasons that are truly truly not worth my peace. I'm not "keeping" my own heart. I'm not self-disciplined anymore. A truly ugly concept in this day and age, I know, but it is a must. Once my spiritual disciplines become lax, so do all my others. The spirit is the leader and must lead.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!

Relevant Verses
1 Corinthians 9:24-25
Galatians 5:16-26
2 Timothy 2:3-5
Hebrews 12:5-13