A New Notebook

A new notebook.  I just LOVE cracking open a new notebook.  Or, really, any school supplies.  It's not that I loved school that much.  I did, but not to the extent of wanting to become a student again.  

It's the "new" factor that gets me every time.  That notebook, that freshly sharpened pencil, that just-uncapped Bic, well, they're all unblemished.  They're just about perfect.  That notebook hasn't had any wrong answers written in it yet, no doodles in the margin as mementos of a time when I was supposed to be listening but wasn't.  The pen hasn't written something stupidly spelled wrong, something which had to be scribbled out so hard that the ink bled through, ruining not only where I wrote but the page I was saving for tomorrow.  The pencil's tip is sharpened to a point that could draw blood in a fierce duel, the eraser still a perfect pink cylinder, unmarked by black graphite from trying to erase a mistake we can all pretend wasn't there in the first place.

And so it is with my soul.  I swear, when I got it, my soul was in great shape.  Yeah, it had that little spot in the side from Adam and Eve (thanks, guys!), but some damage is bound to happen in shipping.  My parents and godparents took it to be repaired about three weeks after I was born (my Baptism day), and I managed to keep it shiny-clean for quite a while after that.

And then, I learned to talk.  And, being human, we have an inclination to sin.  And many of those sins happen in speech; lies, gossip, and the like.  From the first time I pointed a chubby toddler finger at my brother and proclaimed, "He did it!", I have been messing up.  Repeatedly.  Marking up that nice clean notebook, I mean, soul.  Even now, as my brother and I live miles apart, and our mom really no longer cares who started it, it is so much easier to lay the blame on someone else.  It's also much more entertaining to speak about someone else's shortcomings rather than acknowledge my own.  That, my friends, is a little sin we call "gossip."  Which is so much fun, it sometimes becomes a big, repeated sin, because it is so easy to find others who want to join in the entertainment. 

Times like this, I am relieved to be a Catholic.  (Actually, I'm happy every day to be Catholic, but this is one of my favorite perks.)  We have seven sacraments (I'll get to explaining them all eventually), and one of my favorites is the sacrament of Reconciliation.  It's when we confess our sins to a priest, and, in the person of Christ, he forgives us for all the wrongs we have done.  It's pretty cool.  And then  I happily walk away, big grin on my face, like a kid with a brand-new, clean, unblemished notebook.