Chaos and Order

It's one of those days where I don't know what to write. As always, a lot of things are in my mind, but they're all fragmented bits of thoughts and not fully (or even halfway) developed.

But, ironically, this is one of the reasons I need to write. In the Harry Potter series, Dumbledore pulls memories out of his mind and stores them away so he can come back to revisit them later. And in a sense, this is what writing is for me, a way to extract the thoughts from my head, not only so I can revisit them later, but so they stop rattling around in my mind and distracting me.

You see, when I don't write, all those thoughts and fragments of thoughts whirl around in my head constantly, and I cannot help but focus on them. At times like this, I'm only halfway involved in the present moment; another part of me is lost in my own head trying to make sense of it all, put it all together, or even sort it all out.

I'm one of those people who has trouble sleeping sometimes because I can't stop thinking. When I do finally sleep, often the things on my mind carry over into my dreams.

Sometimes writing helps me disconnect thoughts that I had assumed were connected until I started examining them more closely. At other times writing helps me make connections between thoughts that I hadn't realized were related.

The Torah was written in Hebrew, and from what I understand, ancient Hebrew is actually made up of word pictures, where each letter is a picture, so each word is made up of pictures, and so on. These word pictures help bring more understanding to the ideas being expressed. I've read that when you take into account the word pictures, Genesis 1:1 actually says, "The one who hung on a cross stood in the midst of chaos and brought order."

Now, obviously, I don't place myself anywhere close to the level of God. But I think there's something to be said for the ability of creation to bring order where there was chaos. God, of course, is the Creator, but we are fashioned in his image, so it only makes sense that the Creator would design us to create as well. Naturally, how this looks in our individual lives varies because we all have unique interests and abilities. I think most people would agree that God put a desire to create inside of us, but I think the word pictures mentioned above bring a greater understanding, not just to the Genesis account of creation, but also to the significance of creation, taking what was chaos and bringing order to it.

Writing brings order to the chaos in my head. It is how I create. How do you create?