3/22/2004 09:06:00 PM|||Andrew|||Tonight, I plan to do something I haven't done in a good while...take a long nightime walk through campus. I was thinking about it today, and I realized that nearly all the the really good thinking I've done since I came to A&M about two and a half years ago has been done while I wander aimlessly around campus at night. Almost invariably, that is where I have done all my preliminary planning for various papers and essays that I've written, and even more startling is the amount of poetry, deep conversations with God, deep life-changing conversations with other people, well reasoned beliefs and doctrines and all manner of thought has gone on during this very activity.

I have to stop and wonder why that is. The reason why I do my best thinking outside rather than inside is pretty clear to me; not only do I find that in general things are quieter and less distracting outside, but I've always had a special place in my heart for the outdoors. Somehow, I feel more myself when I'm outside...closer to God.

Nightime fits in with the general theme of quietness, I think. There are far fewer people around campus at night (particularly late at night) than during the day, and fewer people means fewer distractions. But there's something more there, something deeper. There's something...elusive and mysterious about the night, something which evokes feelings of awe and wonder whenever I experience it. Someone has said, "The only thing required to be a philosopher is a sense of wonder." I don't know if I agree with that or not, but a sense of wonder about the world has served me very well through these past few years, and the night more than any other time seems to bring that out in me. Why that is I can't say. But the night, ah the night...the night is a wonderous time.

Now I don't intend to run off immediately or anything...I may very well spend a bit more time here, at the campus computer center typing up some things and getting to work on some of the work I wanted to do on this blog but haven't in the past few days. But tonight is my night for serious contemplation, and that will take place (I hope) the one way I've learned to trust...a nightime walk, melancholy or joyous, through the silent empty arms of this beautiful campus all around me.

I probably won't get back to you until tomorrow, so goodnight and goodnight. May the peace of night descend upon you.|||108001838266088695|||