A Blank Slate

Tabula Rasa - a cleared mind. Refreshment. I always thought that if you were going to start over, it meant having no benefit of previous experience. Last week, however, I created a new design for my web site in a day, and came up with the code for it in 2 days. Now, I haven't exactly got around to finishing it, but let me say this: If I were editing my old side extensively, I would never have reached anything like the new site design. If I had never designed the old page, the new design wouldn't have been so nice. Apparently experience follows when you start over.

This week, I had a graphic design project to do. I had created a few different rough drafts and I had no avenues of improvement. In a painful decision, I scrapped all three ideas. It didn't take me a full half hour to come up with a whole new design that was more visually interesting. Now what happened? Those first three took hours of trying to just think of an idea to start with.

A blank slate is the best use of new experience. That is one reason why God's grace is truly so amazing. If we were not to be wiped clean, we would not have grounds nor room for our transformation. In Cor 301, we are experimenting to become a true Christian community. One of the virtues of this is emptiness. The reason is that we all come in with our own backgrounds and we simply can't transcend them by trying. We have to clear the mind and use our experience to interpret the data is if it were brand new. Amazing.