I'm getting lazy this summer. Actually I've been busy with many things. Busy. Is that good? I think so. At least it means that I have some energy, although it feels like nervous energy. Nerves...there's nothing to be done with them!
I have, in fact, been writing scraps of this and that in the theological realm. But these things grow slowly, with time and attention, like trees in a garden. I am pruning and watering the ground, and hoping for fruit.
But I don't want to neglect the blog. So here is (part of) the post from one year ago, August 1, 2011. I could have written the same thing today. The human person also grows slowly....
This might seem strange, but I often go back to these posts and learn something from them, or remember something that I had forgotten. In desperate moments, I am reminded of the mercy and love of Jesus, and that He is worthy of my confidence. I see again how He has been working in my life, and surrounding me with signs of His tender care. I am frequently tempted to doubt. These pages have sustained me in the face of those temptations.
It's like having a diary (with a bit of scrapbook too), a diary that I show to everyone else. That's okay with me. I'm an open person, open to a fault. I'm one of those people who actually answers the question, "How are you?" I don't have many secrets; only the ones that I don't even tell myself. So of course there's some fibbing in these pages, but there would be in a locked and bolted diary book too, because we all lie to ourselves.
I know this: God is at work, in me, in our marriage, in our family, in these gestures and attempts to communicate. There are flaws everywhere. It all seems tinged by my faults and my self-centeredness, and especially by my vanity. There is vanity in my reflections and actions and especially in my words. Less, perhaps, than there used to be--I am learning a little more about how to let things go, if only because I am getting older and I just can't fool myself quite as well as I managed to do in the dreams of youth.
Of course, there are no doubt as yet undiscovered realms of foolishness in this, the sophomoric period of my middle age. I still hope to be recognized and acknowledged, and I'm still frustrated because my brilliant words do not get enough attention. Yet that is not the whole explanation for why I write.
To paraphrase Fr. Carron, the point is not that I can talk about Christ being present in my life. The point is that He is present in my life. That is the difference. I probably talk about it too much. But in the midst of all these words there is testimony to the fact that He is here.
That is what really matters.
