inspiration

I have probably told you my thoughts on this subject before. However, it has come to me again as I share my newest insights gained through the writing of various inspired thinkers. And, although my daughters (who are readers too, isn't that great?) are reading different books, it is remarkable how often the themes are the same, viewed through different lenses.

Many years ago, a teacher asked us why we believed in God. In a fundamentalist Protestant private school setting, this was an earth-shattering question for me. Now, this teacher did have the sense to protect his job and did not ask this question of the whole class. For some reason, I was able to waggle myself into a special study group in Religion class. This class was only supposed to be for students whose marks were top-notch. Mine never were because I was always easily distracted by any number of things and homework was never my strong suit. However, I was in the small special group and got my world rocked for the first time. Of course, my thinking and questioning progressed over the years and today I find myself far from a literal fundamental interpretation of the Bible as "truth". Anyhow, one of the gems I got out of that process was the idea of inspiration vs dictation, when it came to the authorship of the books of the bible.

Today, I am willing to say there are definitely any number of inspired writers out there who, bless them, are giving gifts of insight and wisdom to anyone out there who speaks their language! How wonderful it is that such a variety of writers exists, and not just writers, speakers too. For each student there is a teacher.

I marvel at thought and the nature of knowledge and was pleased to discover this quote on whiskey river:

"Knowledge is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges
toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually
incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single
theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the
others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process
of competition, to the development of our consciousness."- Paul Karl Feyerabend