We have a green front porch. Today, and probably for the next 58 days, it will be white; white and eight inches taller than normal.

Even so, spring weather, come quickly.

I’ve just gotten home from a long weekend in Saratoga. My thoughts are a few. My analytical ramblings are probably too much to write about. But I’m going to try to at least mention them.

A few weeks ago, while at the New Attitude conference, one of the speakers said something which has caused my mind to take another look at my heart and my motives. I wrote it down: God is not calling us to humility, He is calling us to reality. That is, the moment we think that we’ve somehow attained humility, it is that second that we haven’t. But, living with a realistic view of what is and what matters, keeps us constantly in awe of His presence, thus, we are humbled.

A conversation I had with a friend last week began the rumination of this all over again. I am so consumed with idealistic diagrams of how life ought to look that when life doesn’t resemble even a bit of it, I am shaken at the core. Perhaps not quite that drastic, but at times it seems like it. The moment I hold my lofty aspirations up to the light, I find that the once perfectly tightened weave of idealism is about as closely woven as cheesecloth. My hope crashes to the ground. I speak mostly of small things, like my never list [I will never slow-dance; I will never drink coffee; I will never go to Les Mis without a husband; I will never visit Disneyland; and I will most certainly never buy a cell phone.], the things I find if I ever did, it wouldn’t change my person, it wouldn’t change my character, it would only change reality a little more. Is that so bad?

Being sufficient with reality. Being comfortable, but never content, with the sin my being commits. Facing the small things that make us real and make us human. Knowing that as a human, I will always long for acceptance, and this needs not be something I must fight ascetically against. I must not force myself to be something other than what I have been created to be. I know someone who emulates the purest, most honorable character I have ever known a person to have, but he still has hobbies and he still laughs at jokes. He runs out of money and sometimes he gets depressed. He doesn’t like some foods and that’s okay, because he likes other foods he probably shouldn’t. He is the most human person I know and I think this is why he is the most humble person I know.

I have been reading Thomas Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander this past week and some of his thoughts on this issue are this,

We have to remember the principle that certain desires and certain pleasures are willed for us by God. We cannot live in the truth if we automatically suspect all desires and all pleasures. It is humilty to accept our humanity, pride to reject it.
Von Hugel, in one of his letters, write of W.G. Ward ad an “Eager, one-sided, great, unintentionally, unjust soul” who on his deathbed saw the mischief of his life – he has consistently demanded that all others be like himself.
This is the root of inhumanity!
It is often more perfect to do what is simply normal and human than to try to act like an angel when God does not will it. That I, when there is no need for it, except in the stubborn passion of our own impatience with ourselves.
It is not practical, it is not honest, it is not Christian to fly from every desire and every passion that is not explicitly pious.
For others who are human enough to be ascetics without losing any of their humanity, it is all right to risk things that seem inhuman. For one as deficient and self-conscious as I am, the ordinary ways are safer. They are not just an evasion to be tolerated; they are a more perfect way.

And this from a man who lived a life of celibacy, reclusion and silence so as to know God more!

Another of my weekend thoughts resembles this, I am not who I am in spite of my background. You are not who you are in spite of your mistakes a
nd your past. I am not a daughter of a messed up marriage first and a child of God second. You are not what other people say you are, even if sometimes we feel like it. We are who we are because of our mistakes, because of our past and because of our messy rooms. Because we have been redeemed and we have been adopted, the only extra baggage we carry around is the slip of paper, which can be easily shown to anyone who asks, proclaiming our adoption. Proclaiming our sonship and proclaiming our redemption.

I am not stopping this weblog. I’ve gotten quite a few worries that I am, and quite a few questions on why I haven’t yet. I’m not. I came home and our computer is on the blink and for that I am quite thankful. I am taking a break. I may pop up here and there and I may begin posting quite regularly again in a week or so, but today I am taking a break. Tomorrow I am taking a break. I’d like to think it’s because my creative juices have dissipated and I that am no longer creative, but since I don’t even know if I was in the first place, that can’t hold water. I’d like to say it’s because suddenly everyone has a weblog and I’m not interested in what everyone else does, but I just wrote those few paragraphs on being human, and my humanity does want to do what everyone else does. I’d like to say it’s only because the computer has a virus or something, but I have access to the computer I’m on right now. There really aren’t any reasons that will suffice anyone, so suffice it to say, today I’m done.