What do you think of my food metaphor?

I've been thinking: whenever we as humans are fed a particularly juicy piece of information steak, we immediately try washing it down with junk food and soda instead of really chewing that new information. What? The food metaphor doesn't work? Alright fine.

So I usually get my epiphany moments when reading, which I prefer, because anything substantial I learn I'm able to read and reread to my heart's content. Until it really sinks in, so I can be sure that I'll be a different person closing and putting down the book from when I first picked it up.

But I'm starting to think what I do after reading is just as important as what I do during. As in, do I let my thoughts wander freely without distraction, or do I click the TV on and flip through channels? I think good thoughts, the ones that really strike us and excite us, deserve to marinate a little. If you'd allow me a final stab at the food metaphor, I'd say that new information is raw food, and it's a bad idea to eat it without letting it cook for a good while. Otherwise, we can't digest and absorb nutrients from the food we just ate, and it just goes straight through us.

Diarrhea is what I'm trying to describe. Or maybe we'll just vomit information back out at other people, showing we didn't take the time to try and understand it, and are only trying to sound smart and impress people. Either way, the food's not doing what it's supposed to be doing, which is feeding us. I think a very real example of this is when I read blogs, because a lot of very good posts show up on my browser window. But before I'm able to generate a single thought from it, I'm already back on Facebook. Effectively poking a small hole in my skull, and letting my rotting brain matter leak all over my keyboard. Facebook does that to you.

I can think of another example, but not everyone will be able to relate I guess. Because at church, I have to confess, I don't remember what my pastor talked about last Sunday or Friday. Remembering specifics is hardly the point, but I have a feeling nothing that was said left any lasting impression on me. I mean, why go to class if the student isn't learning anything? I'm thinking that maybe the conversations in the hallways after the message(almost never about what was just preached) have something to do about it. Not a judgment, hopefully, but a wake-up reminder. If we don't talk about what was talked about, or acknowledge that the service ever happened, it will be as if it hadn't. Then we're wasting a lot of our weekend, aren't we?

This post will end very abruptly. I've got nothing left to say. I hope you understand.