summer entry

Just got back from a family reunion, and caught a cold on the way back and spent all of yesterday in bed with fever...truck broke down during the weekend so had to spend a 2 more nights and a day and a half with very hospitable relatives...restless sunday night for fear the truck wouldn't be repaired by monday--there is a certain panic that besets any victim of prolonged compassion--anyway prayers were answered, and the truck got fixed that day.
Seeing so many relatives was like being too full of love and happiness and the bit of pain and suffering that life always gives. It's silly how easy it is to feel outcast by those who feel so lonely and dejected themselves, but remembering that I am sharing their pain and not receiving it, helps me. Finding out the stigma from living in a redneck state always surprises me, but how can I trade more suffering of living in the South than a little less suffering to live where I will not receive chaff? No, as Rodya says in Crime and Punishment, "if I must drink the cup, I shall drink all of it." How strange, I thought driving down the Appalachians, So this is how Blacks or Hispanics must feel: not too much blame, but just enough sympathy. Yrch! This East Coast snobbery almost tempts me to raise the Dixie, but Christianity humbles me to accept the truth in every blow. I am nothing and God is everything.
As St. Theresa of Avila said:
Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing make you afraid.
All things are passing.
God alone never changes.
Patience gains all things.
If you have God you will want for nothing.
God alone suffices.