Procrastinatorial Ponderings

When I am completely absorbed in thinking about people I know very well, I often catch a wisp of their scent, blown in by some unknown breeze. I am always surprised by it. Smells always stir the strongest memories and the strangest longings, longings that transcend time and place.

Desire for unity is the strongest and strangest and most excruciating of them all. It is so other-worldly. When we see beauty we want to be caught up in it somehow. Lewis says it better than I can.

Beauty is not primarily functional. It is not utilitarian. It cannot be used. It can only be enjoyed.
I often feel guilty about a longing which I have mislabeled "laziness." That longing simply to rest and to enjoy beauty. But I think if I did that more often, I would be more practical somehow.

I know this is a very poor standard, but I will feel I have become practically perfect when I can write an essay without staying up all night long to do it. It has not happened in five years. But then, neither have I put beauty first.

One thing have I desired of the Lord; that will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
To behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple.

You Matter To Me

John understands mattering like no one else. His "sacramental theology" is crucial to our understanding of the new life Christ gives. The matter is the medium for the life of the spirit. And what is mattering but a transcription of transcendent truth and reality into the corporeal world?

It's funny how certain things you think about (things you have managed to matter into mystic conversation) keep getting more and more important, even when you've left them alone for a while.

I don't understand it. But I know it just the same. I know that Life Matters. Does Love Matter? I think it can only matter through people. We can only know it through incarnation.

You are your soul. And your soul matters to your body, or your body matters to your soul. What does it mean to tell someone that they matter to you? I do not know.

But I know that sometimes I look at the spiderwebs and sunsets and I see you. Is that you mattering to me?

Sometimes You are there when North Wind comes roaring up the land in loud October. Or when the sun is on the river in Christ Church meadow, or on those rare nights when I can see Jupiter on my walk home down Pullens Lane.

Other worlds Matter.

Elliora matters your spirit to me darling. She is speaking even now, stealing in through the blackness into my half-opened window, sending her golden and scarlet hands into the firmament. Will she find you? Will she make her way across wind and rest upon your eyelids as you sleep?

Elliora matters. She matters sacramentally and so she matters supremely.

And I can feel You smiling at me in the gilded leaves. Why do you love me? Where have you come from, and where are you staying, and where are you going?
Come and see. Do you love me?
Yes, but...
What does it Matter? You follow me.

The Golden Place

Both the children were looking up into the Lion's face as he spoke these words. And all at once (they never knew exactly how it happened) the face seemed to be a sea of tossing gold in which they were floating, and such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered them that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good, or even alive and awake, before. And the memory of that moment stayed with them always, so that as long as they both lived, if ever they were sad or afraid or angry, the thought of all that golden goodness, and the feeling that it was still there, quite close, just round some corner or just behind some door, would come back and make them sure, deep down inside, that all was well.

For all shall be well; and all shall be well; and all manner of thing shall be well.

“For his goodness enfolds every one of his creatures and all his blessed works, eternally and surpassingly. For he himself is eternity, and has made us for himself alone, has restored us by his blessed passion, and keeps us in his blessed love. And all because he is goodness.”

There is a great deal of difference between doubting and pouting.

Often when I think I am having doubts about God, I am really only having a bad case of the sulks.

I think maybe that pouting sometimes contains a small grain of real doubt, which may be healthy. But it is hard to know.

Enraptured and Enraged

How I feel when I read Chesterton.

I bought a little Pinochio puppet today. I really like that story.

Where I have been

I think only about 5 people in the entire world read my blog, and all of those people know where I am.

Ah, that ever tantalizing metaphysical question of "where".

Friends I have an announcement to make. Friends, I have finally done it. IT is finished, although, I really doubt that anyone who has read it feels they have arrived.

Friends, just an hour ago I completed my first Chesterton--The Man Who Was Thursday.

I didnt understand it, of course. although i now understand a good many other things much better than before.

But Chesterton bewitches and irritates me. I think I now need to do some serious cartwheeling to get him out of my system.

And I am in Florence now.

I Love This Girl

There are a few rare souls in the world who know exactly what other people need.

Simplicity

There is something so comforting about butter and toast.

Charlotte

There are some people in the world who seem to have been born with an extra measure of refinement and grace. My neighbor Charlotte was one of them. She was from the old school: she worked hard and didn't complain; and when there wasn't a way, she would make one. I have heard that necessity is the mother of invention. Perhaps that is what made Charlotte so resourceful. But what is it that made her so happy?

I think it is the conviction that she was loved. Jim really loved Charlotte. He loved her to the end, and he loves her still.

What will I remember about Charlotte?

I'll remember the girlish delight she took in creating beautiful things and sharing them with other people. She was fantastic with anything involving arts and crafts. She was skilled in making porcelain dolls, in painting, in sewing. And she enjoyed those employments to the hilt.

Charlotte always wanted to go to college, but couldn't because she wasn't a man, and only men were suited for academics. So she taught herself. She never let obstacles stop her from living life. Charlottle teaches me that where there's a will there's a way.

And I will never forget Charlotte and Jim's generosity. They always treated me like an honored guest, and took and active interest in the things that were important to me. I wish I could have known Charlotte longer. I wish I could have written her stories down.

She told me one once, a classic, to be sure. When Charlotte was a teenager she borrowed her mother's pearl necklace to go to a dance without telling her. To her horror, it slipped off while she was riding the bus. When she returned to search, it was gone. Unknown to her, however, her brother had gotten on the bus after she left it, and sat in the same exact seat, and found the necklace which he recognized. When the two got home, Charlotte could not belive her good fortune. The necklace was returned with none the wiser but Charlotte. And her brother, who lorded it over her for many many years after.

Charlotte's life was one of perseverance through pain. Her son was in Vietnam and the Korean war and had a nervous breakdown. Her daughter Vikki died of cancer when she was in her 40s.

But she always smiled at the world. "Smile, and the world will smile with you, but frown, and you'll frown all by yourself." Jim's famous last words. "Just let life come to you, don't go chasing it," he always tells me.

I guess what I'll remember most about Charlotte and Jim is that they let life come to them and they always enjoyed it. They seemed to know how to live it well. And they loved each other.

What more could one want said of someone? "She loved and lived well."

May that be said of me someday.

Armed at Last

So about a month ago, the nice lady from Biola postal services calls me to tell me there is a FedEx Package for me. My curiosity is aroused. What could it be?

But I forget to pick up the package. So Lisa Philips reminds me again, and I get Kathy to pick it up for me.

And Kathy calls me and tells me its from some mysterious address I've never heard of.

I've been praying for a million dollars. "Well, God," I think, "here's your chance!" ;)

But it's no million dollars.

It's the arm to my Walmart chair. Six months later.

Any creative suggestions for what we could use it for? The remainder of the swiveller is surly severed by now, a dejected heap in some Walmart dumpster.

Didn't Tocqueville have something to say about this whole cheap manufacturing thing? Take me back to the aristocracy!

Ascension non-Comprehension

Today I realized I am totally disoriented regarding LIFE. I don't get what we're doing here.

It started with thinking about Hebrews. I tried putting myself in the readers' perspective. And I realized I don't really get the importance of the Ascension. Where did Jesus go and why?

I don't understand the state of the world. I have a vauge but pressing feeling that I am supposed to be doing Something or being Somebody, but I don't know what it is.

I have an urgent feeling that I'm supposed to be telling people about how Christ is Very Important to getting IT, but I get confused about what IT is sometimes. A lot of the time. Or I don't get Christ enough. Is enough ever enough of God?

I get confused about the one and the many sometimes, too, but that's something different altogether. Or maybe not.

I've concluded that maybe I would understand the rest if I could understand Dying To Self. But where does one start with that?

I have a friend. And today it struck me that the unexplainable feeling I have around her is that of being in the presence of the dead. She is dead, but she is still achieving, still pursuing.

"You have died, and you life is hidden with Christ in God." Where exactly am I? And how does this influence the next decision I make?

I am a Son of God. I must be about my Father's business. Something about loving....??

I don't get life sometimes. But I don't think you can get it by choosing to get it, can you? Can you even choose to die?

"The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me, a sacrifice and sweet smelling aroma."

Death is sweet smelling. That's so weird. I don't get it.

I don't get choice. Everything and nothing depends on it.

Wherein I Nearly Commit Patricide

I now live in constant, paralyzing fear of AX-MURDERING-GARAGE-DOORS-WHO-HAVE-MINDS-OF-THEIR-OWN!!

The Mecca That Is Becca

So I have this friend named Rebecca, and I spend all my time trying to reach her, to pay a poor pilgrim's hommage at her golden shrine. I must receive her Oxfordian Oracle if I am ever to have a prosperous journey to Englan's green and pleasant land!!

My tears have been my food day and night. Is there no mediary who can relay my message to the goddess?

CORNEA CATASTROPHE!

This was no ordinary contact crisis. This was Calamity on a Grand Scale.

It started yesterday morning, when I realized, just in the nick of time, that I was about to put TOOTHPASTE on my contact lens.

I've had a suspicion for most of my life that today was fully confirmed: I am losing it. Today will go down in Infamy in the Annals of Ashley's Existence.

This morning as I went to put on my contact lenses, instead of solution, I put two big drops of CLEANSER onto my contact and then into my EYE. I thought it was all over. My right eye was dying in a blaze of fire and brimstone.

I rushed to the optomotrist, who told me, to my utter shock, that I was going to live. I glarred at him in a glazed grimmace. You are insane, I thought. My EYE is clearly ON FIRE. If you don't extinguish it now there will be nothing left!

But he was right. Thanks to God and antibiotics and lubricating drops, I am alive and well.

Friends, don't ever let me do that again. I'll take plain old contact crises any day. :)

Wardrobe Wanderings

I have curious streak, I'll admit it. When I was little I thought being a spy would be the coolest thing ever. Harriet was my hero. I even started a neighborhood club, with me and the kid next door as the only full-fledged members. Our operating base was located in a storage room in my garage. Matthew and I were skilled climbers, let me tell you, and we got into a lot of highly patrolled territory...like the neighbor's backyard.

I guess I never outgrew that streak, and it's a good thing, too, because if I had, I wouldn't have found a dear friend.

While down at my Grandpa's condo in San Clemente a few weeks ago, I conducted a thorough investigation of the closets and drawers. To my delight, I found several books that belonged to my Great-Grandmother Dora.

There he was, dear old Longfellow, long forgotten, long forlorn, in the dusty upper shelf of the hall wardrobe. The gold lettering on the 1893 copy still caught the light against the dark green cover.

I opened him up and began to read.

Well put, my good fellow.

Love Affair with Green

I have always like green. Must be that thing I have with trees. But it is only just recently that I discovered that there is a certain shade of green that makes me light up like no other color. No, it won't take the place Deep Red has in my soul--no color could do that. But I find Green completely irresistible. I feel like I am more fully alive in this color...closer to the Ash trees I am named for.

It is a happy day.

August 11

Your Birthdate: August 11

Your birth on the 11th day of the month makes you something of a dreamer and an idealist. You work well with people because you know how to use persuasion rather than force. There is a strong spiritual side to your nature, and you may have intuitive qualities inherent in your make up, too. You are very aware and sensitive, though often temperamental. Although you have a good mind and you are very analytical, you may not be comfortable in the business world. You are definitely creative and this influence tends to make you more of a dreamer than a doer.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

I found this link on Joi's blog. Strikingly accurate, in my opinion. Good. Now I can blame my dysfunction on the stars. ;)

A Sign for Every Season

"What is the one thing that has happened in your life that proves God's existence to you?"

My dad asked this question today at the kitchen table. Dad's always asking leading questions. In fact, I don't think I've ever received a piece of information from dad which wasn't exasperatingly coerced out of me by his bursting enthusiasm. Once I throw him the answer he wants, dad pounces on it like dog with his favorite toy.

It turns out that what dad wanted, in this rare case, was to give an answer, not get it. But before I tell you his answer, I have to tell you a little bit more about dad.

Dad's a little hysterical sometimes, about the most random things. About a month ago, he happened upon a website selling Solar Light Crosses. A week later we got Dad's $50 gizmo in the mail: a 2 ft tall white plastic cross with two rechargable batteries that never quite seem to work right.

A piece of junk, we all thought. All of us except Dad. Everynight he tried it out in a new location, in the planter, in the pool. Tonight I saw it, a glowing guardian, at the foot of my parent's bed.

It's been a month, and Dad's still just as enthusiastic. He wants me to start a business and sell them to my friends. He'd like to see it on every hill in America. What better symbol of Christ? he asks. "This is really going to freak people out. This is really going to proclaim the message of Christianity."

Mom and I exchange glances and shrug. Maybe he's onto something. And maybe he's not. Dad's got an awful lot of corpses in the graveyard of aborted brainstorms.

But today I saw that solar cross in a different light. Not the weird eerie white glow I usually see.

"What proves to you the existence of God?"

Dad grew up in deserty New Mexico. They have a reputation for seeing things in the sky. Some places in the world are like that.

Dad saw something once.

"I was nine. And Lorraine and I were on Grandma Refugio's porch. And all of a sudden we saw a shining white cross in the sky, as bright as the moon!! We called everyone out of the house and they saw it too! I couldn't believe it!!!!"

Dad hasn't had an easy life, to say the least. There are a lot of reasons he could have given up trying to get through one more day. But he doesn't. He knows God is real. He's seen the light of the cross, and it's effect on him is still as powerful today as it was when he was nine. And he wants everyone else to see it to.

I love my dad, and I love his cross, the literal and the figurative. And I'm learning to love the other crosses in my life. I don't know why God put me in the family he did, why he's given, and why he's taken away. But I'm learning to trust him.

"If any man come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. He who desires to save his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake will find it."

It's a season. A season, and a good one.

Onions

"Those will make you cry."

Grandpa didn't know where the refrigerator was today. But Grandpa knows what makes me cry.

I always seem to be saying good night to him while he's eating dinner. He always eats late. I guess all those years of late night gigs have ruined him for regular dining hours.

Grandpa always kisses me with a mouthful of food. Tonight I got onions in my kiss, the ones I was cutting up earlier. Grandpa never liked onions, but he doesn't notice them anymore.

I wonder if I'll ever be like that, if I'll ever stop noticing the things that make me cry.

Silly Questions

My Grandpa Dale is a silly man. Sadly silly, because of the Alzheimer's, but silly nonetheless. I like that twinkle of comprehension that still plays about his green eyes.

In a lot of ways, Grandpa still retains that "sharpness" he's so fond of detecting in other things and people. Not the saavy sort of sharpness, but the kind that comes with an outfit or a car.

You never know what you're going to get with Grandpa. Sometimes he can't remember how to put on his seatbelt. Sometimes he comes out of his room wearing hardly anything. Sometimes he plays the guitar like Joe Pass.

There are only about four topics of conversation Grandpa and I can engage in, and we return to them often throughout the day. I'm told I'm supposed to answer each repeated question as if I were hearing it for the first time.

Usually I don't have to think when I'm around Grandpa. I can answer mechanically if I want to. After all, Grandpa's questions don't really matter that much, and he won't remember the answer I give him.

But Grandpa keeps asking. Maybe deep down he knows I'm just placating him. Maybe deep down he knows I'm just paying lip service.
Maybe.

Those questions Grandpa asks, when I face them honestly, turn out to be the hardest questions anyone could ask. Grandpa can't remember very much, but he remembers things I sometimes wish he didn't.

I can't answer those questions, not today, Grandpa.

I keep tossing Grandpa my prefabricated pacifiers, hoping he'll be satisfied. But I know he won't be. Tomorrow he'll ask me again.

Will I be ready to answer?

It is comforting...

..that even in the midst of human woes
the wind still stirs and speaks
and leaves cannot contain their joy.