A meandering mind…

On First inspection several words are made very obvious. The Magi, Christ, Gregory, Leo, Gifts, Pope, Matthew, Testament and St.

The overall wordle mesh is a good summation of the work that I have done to date on my Thesis topic which is in relation to the Adoration of the Magi in Matthews Gospel in the New Testament.

So far, much of the work I’ve done has been in relation to the Patristic interpretations of the Magi and the writings of Popes Gregory, Leo and the exegetes Augustine, Chrysostom, Leontius and others. As already said the obvious is obvious, and features on a larger scale in the wordle image.

But the merit of this tool for me is that while trying to decide what to blog about I began realising it’s use as a study tool. That in fact the bigger the word there is almost less importance attached to it as it is something you are already familiar with. As in all honesty my prior use of this tool has always been merely to create pretty pictures that add visual substance to a blog post. Little did I know the reality of the visual substance to which I was adding to a post by adding such an image.

While studying this image it is not so much the big words that jump out at me but the names of scholars I’ve used, the names of Popes and exegetes. The areas I tackled in particular in relation to the gifts of the Magi. The more one studies such an image the more jumps out at you and makes itself heard and obvious. It’s a wonderful revision tool and also most useful for the focusing in on areas, by assessing size and therefore uses of certain words one can establish where one may need to to focus more attention on and possibly expand potential understanding. Also as you expand research you can compare and contrast the time and effort of the content of your work so far to ensure you have a balanced approach to your research and work.

The potential uses of Wordle are many but more importantly they are very useful. No doubt as I begin to use it more and more this will become ever more obvious to me.