Sunday, October 20, 2002
Well, I'm back on my own computer again. Got the phone line situation sorted out for a while anyway. I talked to Alltel and apparently they are just more expensive than Verizon was for the same service, which bites a little. I may have other options, though--there are other places in town who offer home telephone service. I may check some of them out and see just how they work. I'm not certain I can use them for hooking up to the Internet, but then again I'm such a techno-dunce sometimes--who knows?
I've been spending a good bit of my "time off" from the net reading The iMac For Dummies, a book I bought when I got the computer because they don't come with an operator's manual. A lot of the info is stuff I already have picked up along the way, but there have been some handy shortcuts I've learned, especially in the area of word processing. I've also been trying to get through "Anam Cara", but it's proving to be difficult. I know I said that thing about hay and chaff, but when it becomes almost entirely chaff, eventually you need to move on or starve. I'm on page 58 of 231, and the author has moved almost entirely off the subject of "soul friends" as the guy defined it in the seminar I attended, and is spending all of his time talking about subjects like, "the infinity of your interiority" and "the senses as thresholds of soul". Letting one's senses define and determine the condition and progress of one's spirituality seems to fly in the face of orthodox (small "o") Christian teaching, or at least the way I was "brought up" spiritually. The Bible seems to me to teach more about not letting the tangible get in the way of what is happening on a spiritual level--not letting your circumstances affect the inner truth of what God is doing in your life.
This brings to mind something I read on Kevin Rains' blog and told him I was likely to "steal". Here's the quote: "The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of a pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise. "--Brennan Manning This quote spoke to me because, frankly, it seems to validate the way I have been living my life lately. I get all in a funk sometimes when I sit around and think about the fact that I don't have the details of my life planned out for years in advance like some of my friends seem to. I know that there are things that God wants me to do with my life (or rather, I think I've heard from God about the basic outline), but I generally don't know when each step of the "plan" will be accomplished or how. I certainly don't want to end up some flaky old lady who sat around all my life "waiting on God", but there must be a balance between flaky and anal retentive. I want to be one who really gets the "life more abundantly" bit.
Hi, I'm Debi. Once in a while I have a thought and I like to write it down before it goes away. This is where I write it.
