On Learning

                I have been doing a lot of reading and receiving of information as of late. I have always loved to read, but God has been leading me down some interesting paths of reading lately. I have been confused though because I am one who likes to know that everything I am reading and doing is coming into a coherent pattern or way of belief. I am okay with reading in a scatter-shot manner if God wishes me to, but only if I get to define what that will mean. I know it is backwards; but there it is.

                As I continue down this journey of reading and following the rabbit trail that is before me, I feel as if God is preparing me to enter into the blogging community in a more intentional manner. Many of you know my former blog and what I once wrote. It was very formative for me spiritually, and for making me a writer. However, having gone back to graduate school and facing a personal spiritual journey that has taken me down some steep terrain knocked the wind out of the sails and I just have not gotten back to what I was doing. My ship now has a deeper rudder, the draft is shallow and the wind is picking up.

                The thing about my kind of writer’s life that is so maddening, yet engaging, is that nothing really is off limits for observation. I remember angry e-mails from readers telling me to “focus your thoughts” and “I cannot follow you because I cannot figure out your mind”. I am a philosopher, theologian, teacher, preacher and all around provocateur, and I intend to keep it that way. In this I may have more of a journalistic mind, but I do not want to write what is necessarily popular, or even right. My desire is to provoke thought, engage with that thought, and bring it out into the world and see how it plays out. I want to live in the tension of this life, this modern, post-modern, crazy-ass life. It will surely have the up’s and the downs, it will surely be boring, and once in a while fascinating. If it brings transformation, I have reached what I hope to do.  

                My hope in all of this is to bring coherence to my worldview, and hopefully be able to bring you along in that quest. I will try to post a few times a week. It may be simple links to good writing I have found, or it may be something more deep and personal. What it will be is a journey, and often times it is the journey that tells us the most about the destination we seek. Once we land at the location we seek we will hopefully be wiser and stronger than we were before. So let us begin as all good stories do. Once upon a time…