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.