Week of 9/21

This week was a good week for me, english-wise.

Now, I don't mean to get all religious on my blog or anything, but this week I mostly read the Book of Mormon and studied my scriptures. Of course, that's good for me and my religion, but one thing about the scriptures that helps me in english is that I like to use the Topical Guide a lot, which is sort of like an Index to the scriptures. You can look up any subject/word you want to, and it will give you a list of scriptures that go with that subject, or have that word in it. I have to look things up alphabetically each time, and then actually find the scriptures in the book, etc. This is really good practice for me, as searching/ looking up things and finding them hasn't always been a strength of mine. Also, for any of you who have read the scriptures, you probably know how difficult the scriptures are to interpret and understand. They use many parables that you have to often figure out on your own, and use words and language used around 2610 years ago. With all the "ye"s and "art"s and "thou"s and "thy"s, it tends to get a little confusing, and takes some getting used to. One thing I find (as well as many others who have read these books) is that I often find myself just reading words, and not actually thinking about what I'm reading. I've never really done this before in my normal reading, but since the scriptures are so different and complex, you don't really think about it, you just read it. So...I often have to make an extra effort to actually think about what I'm reading and what it means. I realized this, and now I try to not only not do that while reading my scriptures, but other normal books as well.

Another thing that is very fascinating about the scriptures is that no matter how many times I read them I find literally hundreds of new things I didn't see the last time. For example, about a week ago I was reading 1 Nephi, and today when I was in seminary, my teacher asked us to skim through the same part I had been reading before, and even then I saw and read what I had read the week before in a whole different view/perspective. That part of the scriptures meant something totally different than it had before. Of course, Mormons might say this is because the spirit is guiding you while you read, and all that, but I was just thinking that maybe I should try to reread things more often, so maybe I can find new things than before and see things differently, even in my normal reading.

Another thing I love to do is mark my scriptures - mark things that stand out to me, or that are important and special. I spend hours just finding cool scriptures and marking them. Then, sometimes I like to flip through my scriptures and find all the cool things I've marked and read them again. This is a good skill for my normal reading and english, because it helps me pick out the things that are important and need to be remembered.

So....that's basically what went on. I had a great week :)