Sunday, August 26, 2012

Soft Sunday Sounds: Boundlessly curious

This post is inspired by a quote from one of my favorite professors at BYU.

Because I'm boundlessly curious and must know everything.

This is a pretty good description of me. And because I love learning so much, I also love to learn about learning. It's just this great cycle of love and learning. And since so many people are going back to school and I'm not, and I just attended a fireside which sparked some thoughts on learning, I felt this was a good topic for today. 

As I listened to WSU President Ann Millner's words at the start of a fireside tonight at the Weber State Institute Building in Ogden, she said a phrase that sparked a sudden bringing together of ideas from across my brain. The phrase was "stewards of learning". Stewardship has always been something I've loved to learn about. My first interest in stewardship came as I learned about the law of consecration and stewardship in the early Mormon Church. I loved the idea that members of the Church gave all they had to the Church, but that they were then trusted with property (generally the very property they had just given to the Church) and given stewardship or responsibility over that property. This stewardship both showed the trust that the Lord had in them, as well as an action of them physically bettering and making use of this property. So to me, the idea of stewardship very much implies a notion of action and doing. 

So when said in conjunction with learning I was delighted! The little I know about the scientific processes of learning have told me that true learning occurs only when a new pathway is constructed in the brain. So true learning produces an actual change in your brain. Being a steward of your learning to me, then, means you are taking active responsibility for what you learn and how you use it

Now, keep in mind these thoughts formed in milliseconds and I saw a flowchart in my head that I had to write down. 

Endowment - power from on high - knowledge is power - lifelong service and learning - being a steward of your learning

You see, another thing I've thought about increasingly over the last year and a half has been the endowment those who enter the LDS temple for the first time receive. I began planning last year to receive my endowment after graduating as it looked like I wasn't going to be married by that time and I wasn't planning on serving a mission (the major reasons most people receive their endowment). This has been compounded by the fact that I have been studying the Doctrine and Covenants for the last year and a half and have read much about the restored traditions of the temple. For reasons unimportant to this blog I decided to wait for an impending marriage to receive my endowment, but it hasn't taken the yen to receive it and the desire to learn about it out of my mind. 

Additionally, this morning I heard a talk on KBYU where the speaker mentioned that the endowment gives the receiver power from on high, and it has been said that knowledge is power. So you are receiving knowledge, which is something that I have understood from my limited knowledge of the events inside the temple. And the idea that learning is so important that it is an integral part of the most sacred spots on earth just increases my desire for more of it. 

So basically I am boundlessly curious. And I probably shall be for all of eternity. 

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