Having not been raised in an observant household, I am slowly working my way toward a more observant Jewish life. There are 39 things that are prohibited on the Sabbath. I have taken on two of them in ernest. One is I do no kind of business dealings on Shabbat. This means no shopping or ordering or yard sales etc. And the other is not writing. Actually the prohibition is not writing OR erasing. All of the 39 things have to do with work that was associated with building the Tabernacle in the wilderness.
SO - - - - for someone who has gone around the bend manic in the scribbling department, not writing anything for 25 hours is a challenge! I have been chomping at the bit today to get something on paper, but alas, the pens remained idle. But the interesting thing about this occurance every week, is that it reminds me to learn to process some things in my head and KEEP them there until I can get them on paper.
You know, used to be people had great memories. They didn't have a lot of paper to dink around with like we do now, and there were no copiers or palm pilots, or calendars you could look up on the internet or information at their very fingertips like we have today. Just think, in about 60 seconds, you could find out the population of Zimbabwe... well, it might take 3 minutes. But you could do it. (Anybody want to find that out for us and let us know how long it took you to find it?) Anyway, I wonder if access to all these props we have is making us less astute at using our memories.... Just a thought.
You will excuse me now, I have ink to smear around on paper. :-)
Write On!