It's Been a While ...

 

There are a whole lot of sayings about the apparently very human propensity to fail to keep up with our commitments:

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

"Never put off until tomorrow what you should have done two weeks ago."

It's even in the Bible:

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do ..."  (Romans 7:15)

My last posting here was on December 10th.  The one before that -- about a week earlier.  And before that?  Almost another month.  This despite my intention to write at least a little something every day.

I'm a busy guy.  Why would I want to write a blog post every day?  Narcissism?  A need to be noticed and affirmed?  Is it, in the words of shame researcher Bréne Brown, "the shame-based fear of being ordinary"?

I don't think so.  At least not entirely.  (I always leave open the possibility -- even the probability -- that I have motivations I'm not aware of and wouldn't like if I were.)  I think that there are some very good reasons for me, as a working pastor, to be a regular blogger, and maybe it'd help me to remind myself of them.

One of my collegial friends, the Rev. Scott Wells, in explaining on his blog -- Boy In The Bands -- why he does it makes reference to an old-time Southern Universalist (he thinks it was John C. Burruss) who "wrote and edited his newspaper because the printed word would go where 'the living evangel' could not go, and it would survive after he was long dead."  (Thanks for this, Scott.)

I am a preacher and a teacher by trade, vocation, and inclination.  Blogging provides a pulpit with a sanctuary that stretches as far and wide as the internet itself.  I know that all those "pews" will never be filled, but that's true in our brick and mortar sanctuaries as well.  And even if I simply look at the specific congregation I currently serve -- the wonderful Thomas Jefferson MemorialChurch - Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia -- I believe that my blogging serves them.  Not all of our members can come to Sunday services each week, and not everyone can attend our faith development programs, or take place in one of our Covenant Groups, yet I dare say that all of us are looking for something to chew on during the week.  To reflect on.  To meditate on.  And, yes, to think about.  I have no delusions that I am some fount of wisdom, yet I know that I have something to say and as a preacher and teacher for this congregation blogging provides a forum for me to reach out to people both more frequently and more effectively.

And why try to post daily?  I once knew a painter who, when she'd finished with a canvass would immediately start to paint a new image over the one she'd just completed.  And when that one was done she'd begin a third.  There were sometimes five or six images beneath whatever she called her "final" piece, the one that would remain on top when she finally set the canvass aside and began on a new one.  I asked her once why she did this and she said, "I have so many images in my head and I just have to get them out."  So, too, the thoughts, reflections, and observations in mine.

At the same time, too, there's the discipline of it.  Besides, or along with, my being a preacher and teacher, I'm a writer.  And writer's write.  The only way -- really, the only way -- to hone one's craft is to write.  A lot.  And many of the writers I most admire have said that that means at least some writing every day.  So yes, I write a sermon most every week, and a bulletin article and a report to the Board each month, but the discipline of daily writing?  That's where the blog can came in.

Will I do this?  Live into this intention to blog each day?  (Or, at least, each week day?)  I don't know.  We'll see.  At least I hope to be back before March.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Life, Observed

If you're looking for a new blog to read, I can highly recommend O Wonderful, Wonderful.  It's written by a woman we used to live next to, Adrienne Kim Bird.  Her three wonderful kids were the first people my children met when we landed in Peacock Hill two years ago.  They were at our house to give the new kids they'd heard about a tour of the neighborhood even before the moving truck had finished unloading.  There were many, many times when our two backyards became one communal playground.

When I went to add Adrienne's blog to my Feedly account it asked me what category to put it under.  I didn't yet have one for the kind of things she writes, so I created a new category -- Life, Observed.  Check it out.  (The photo here, by the way, is from her blog and is of her then 3-year old daughter, Tatiana, reading Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.  As Adrienne says, a little light reading.)

Pax tecum

RevWik

PS -- I am finally realizing that at least half the fun of blogging is reading blogs by other people and, so I'm having tremendous fun exploring the blogosphere.  I'll keep you posted about some of the great places I find.  Feel free to offer me directions to some of your favorite spots, too!

It's Nice to Be Back!

The month of July was, for me, a month away from the ordinary.  For the first two weeks my family and I were on vacation.  (A friend of mine likes to note that there's a difference between a "a family trip" and "a vacation."  To be honest, this was a bit of both.

The rest of the month my time was split between moving -- a local move to a great house closer-in to town -- and what is usually called "study time."  The first half of that split I would wish on no one.  Because it was a local move we decided to move everything we could by ourselves, and to do it a bit at a time.  That means that literally every day of the last two-and-a-half weeks of July was spent packing up boxes at one house, loading them into the car, driving to the other house, and unloading them into the new house's garage.  Heft, sweat, repeat.  I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

That second half, though -- the study time -- now that was wonderful.  I read a number of really exciting books and really good some much needed stimulation of the grey cells.  I will, over the next few days, write a bit about each of them, but I thought I'd start with the most recent.  In fact, I'm currently only about halfway through it:

The Blogging Church:  sharing the story of your church through blogs, by Brian Bailey and Terry Storch.  I have to say, I'm really enjoying it.  It is written by a couple of guys who are unabashedly evangelistic about both the church and the technology of blogging.  I've gotten a lot of ideas not only for improving A Minister's Musings, but also for possibly introducing blogging as a response (only one response, to be sure) to the perennial problem of communicating within and beyond the congregation.

Might this provide a way to make communicating not only the factoidal information that we seem always to need to broadcast, but also the ideas and even the "feel" of the community?  Would this provide a platform for two-way, conversational communication rather than the more traditional one-way delivery?  And would this be more compelling for people?  (In other words, might this to at least some extent address the problem of folks feeling overwhelmed by information in their in-boxes -- offering a new and more engaging way to keep connected?)

The authors not only share their own quite obvious enthusiasm and experience, but that of other folks who've been involved in the blogosphere for some time.  I think that there's a lot to learn here, and as I learn I am becoming increasingly intrigued by the possibilities being presented.  Oh, it's nice to be back in the saddle again.

Pax tecum,

RevWik