we’re puttin’ the blog back together!

January 2012 we’re puttin’ the blog back together! It doesn’t quite have the ring of “we’re putting the band back together!” but nonetheless, with little fanfare I’m attempting to restart this thing. For someone who talks too much, and hasn’t given others much of a choice but to listen, you’d think this would be easier. After, all, what hasn’t been said? A much older blogger once exasperatingly wrote, “of the writing of many blogs there is no end” and boy he had no idea, if there ever was an understatement, that was it. So comes the question, “why bother?” Why am I doing this? Seriously, aren’t there enough blogs already?


Answering this question for myself has been one reason why this project went on hiatus for so long. I just could not see that I had much to contribute to all the conversations going out there. Besides, in my drafts for blogs, I was spending wayyyyyy tooo much time checking references, citing sources, revising, revising, re-thinking- basically treating the exercise as a research paper, which not only took way too much of my time, but became very boring to read- not exactly what a blog is supposed to be.

So this is what changed. First of all, I found myself on lots of other folks blogs, and chiming in a various points, but finding that I really couldn’t ask the kind of questions I wanted to or take the conversation in directions that intrigued me without severely hijacking the thread. And although many of my thoughts and ideas relate to issues of faith, hope, doubt, etc. I have noticed that more and more, my social network friends and the people I know in the non-cyber world have more and more varied views on many issues- faith, God, power, sex, meaning, the superiority of the Minnesota Wild over the Vancouver Cannucks, all the “big issues” that mankind has struggled with over the eons. In many conversations over the last years, many of these people have stunned me with hugely insightful comments that have challenged me, pointed out the blind spots in my thinking and doing, and caused me to re-think many treasured ideas and practices.

And so, my natural curiosity got the best of me. I began thinking, jeez, that would be fantastic if I were able to get person X and person Y together over a beer and have them discuss ideas a,b,c…. etc. And since in our new social web based world, some of these friends live hundreds, even thousands, of miles away from each other, finding a suitable watering hole would be a bit challenging. I think, but I’m not sure, that This Is Why Someone Invented The Blog.

So rather than hijack someone else’s blog, I thought it would be less offensive (pronounced with the Canadian O not “ahh-fence” btw) to hijack my own. I will try to put some thoughts out here on a clear way that invites thinking and responding. My encouragement to you would be to join the conversation. Cause if this is purely self-stimulation…well- we all know how boring that can be.