Making a List and Checking It Twice

No, I am not going to write a piece about Santa but I did want to be seasonal. Yesterday, besides bottling my Belgian Quad and doing laundry, I was updating my "Lists." I am an inveterate list-maker. To some, it might look like a manifestation of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). It is not; it actually something that keeps me from being OCD. You want to see me become a compulsive nail-biting, cuticle pulling, hand-washer? Take away my list-making.

I keep a Saturday To-Do List (Saturdays are the day to tie up loose ends and do work that needs to be done...six days ye shall work type of thing), a Seasonal To-Do List updated every quarter, and a general Home To-Do list of things that I just need to be mindful of...like how much Comcast rates are going up and my desperate quest to find another way to have internet service. I also keep a Work To-Do list at school...alphabetical by task and then student last name. That came quite in handy for my Sabbatical replacement last year. I did not have to remember who or what had to be shared. It was all there in explicit detail.

I read in one edition of "Life's Little Handbook of Wisdom" that I purchased for like two bucks that a short list is better than a long memory. Even more so when I have a long list. I try to free my brain of content information as much as possible to focus more on decision-making. I let the list, alphabetically-organized, be the fodder for my mind to discern its way through and forward. What can I say, it has worked for me. I use word processing to update my lists, although I do keep a log of what needs to be done first as a hand-written document. I pull from there and put onto my typed lists.

God also makes lists...like the Ten Commandments or the Beatitudes (New Testament Commandments). Should be simple to remember b/c they are so hard to practice. That we don't know the Commandments in order, comprehensively, and quickly, is a pretty good indicator that we don't practice them. Even if we do know them, we are drawn by that remembrance, or should be, to confession.

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