So here I am on the last day of January 2011, and as many things as I had thought and hoped to post here this month I come back to a familiar theme. I've thought about what my goals, resolutions, and hopes for the year might be. I've considered where I am at this point in my life, the changes I've walked through over the last few years in our family, the Church and more. So many things I have wrestled with balancing, prioritizing, coming to terms with, and making decisions on. I've looked inward and outward, desired to process life's puzzling circumstances fairly, honestly, humbly and in a way that will hopefully keep me from falling into my typical blind spots. I've hungered for more creativity, art, sweetness and relational depths to grace my life, yet I find myself coming back to post on my 'watchword', my banner, my passion of passions; Truth, for the subject of my only significant post in this new month of a new year. I'm sorry if I seem to beat this horse to death... it's like the biblical phrase, 'a fire shut up in my bones', I can never keep it down for long. And I always seem to regret unleashing it, for someone whose heart burns for truth, I am a poor communicator and am more often misunderstood than heard.
I came across some quotes by the scientist and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, and his words seemed so timely even though they were penned in the mid 1600s. Jesse and I are studying Philosophy this year and here is a tad more about Pascal. 'Blaise Pascal, the precociously brilliant contemporary of Descartes, was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but it is his unfinished apologia for the Christian religion upon which his reputation now rests. "The Pensees" is a collection of philosophical fragments, notes and essays in which Pascal explores the contradictions of human nature in psychological, social, metaphysical and - above all - theological terms. Mankind emerges from Pascal's analysis as a wretched and desolate creature within an impersonal universe, but who can be transformed through faith in God's grace.' (from Amazon, of all places!) Here are Pascal's thoughts which moved me to make my first and only lengthy blog post in January;
Truth is so obscured nowadays and lies (falsehood) so well established that unless we love the truth we shall never recognize it.—Blaise Pascal, Pensees, #739/864.
Weaklings are those who know the truth, but maintain it only as far as it is in their interest to do so, and apart from that forsake it.—Blaise Pascal, Pensees, #740/583.
LORD, may I have the ability to recognize truth and the courage to live according to truth throughout 2011, is my prayer.
And by the way, if I were to give birth to another son, I think I'd name him Blaise.
May 2011 be all that God wants it to be for each of us.
(I do plan to do more artwork, time will tell if I can get my 'plan' into action!) :)
