Blogging- An Assessment

My blog is almost two months old. It took me a long time to get started but once I got started I have done well keeping the blog updated with fresh material. That alone is a significant achievement for me.

For nearly 15 years I have been responsible for a monthly column in a church newsletter. Initially the columns were typically tedious fare about upcoming events or encouraging people to be involved in one thing or another. Eventually I moved on to columns I hoped had more substance. They were more think-pieces than promotional flyers. Although I seldom get much feedback concerning said columns, I found them much more satisfying to write.

Over time it became clear that I had more ideas and thoughts than I had months to write columns. So the idea of blogging came to me. But I put it off for a number of reasons. I guess it was a new year's resolution to begin.

But the benefit of the blog goes beyond, as one friend put it, the depository for my "wisdom". I am not certain what or how I think or feel about something until I write about it. This is something I tried to impress upon my writing students while I was teaching at UNK. We write, not only to express an idea, but to discover it as well. This is why writing is re-writing, a process that seldom ends.

Which has always been one of my problems. When to stop. Not only do I write to understand how I think or feel, I am also hyper-conscious of all the other ways the subject could be understood. This is a real liability in preaching. The preacher is supposed to come forth with some positive, definitive declaration of the Good News. And yet, always in the back of my mind, is the realization that for every affirmative statement there is the negation. For every assertion of love there is a person whose experience is not being loved. For every declaration of a forgiving God there is a person whose experience has been anything but forgiveness. If I wait until I have answered every objection in my writing, the piece will be too crazed to be useful and be void of any freshness and life.

I have learned, over time, to craft on opinion in the full awareness that every position is tentative, subject to revision. All of our truths are truths for the moment, not necessarily truths for tomorrow. This is not because our truths are vacuous, or that we are likely to abandon one truth for another as often as we change profile pictures. But we must live as if our truths could change, if need be. We can say, with confidence "This I believe" but always with the awareness in the back of our mind that we could be wrong. This is the antidote to fanaticism. Truth is socially constructed. That is to say, what I believe to be true about anything is formed in large part by my social location in the formation. What I hold to be "true" will change as my experience changes, as I act and interact in the world. I believe. Help Thou my unbelief.

We write to discover what we think. We put this tentative conclusion out for consideration. People respond. Some agree, some disagree. We sift through the comments, taking into account the relative seriousness of the responders, casting aside the obviously unhelpful remarks, taking to heart the rest, and modify as necessary.

Which seems, to me, a pretty useful model for how communication should happen generally in the world. We assert ourselves, get the push back, modify, and move on. It is a growth spiral of knowledge and awareness.

And I am a writer, at least I fancy myself as one. Writers want readers. Sure, I could put all of this in a journal and lock it in my drawer. But then I would not get the synergy of the writer/reader relationship. Writers want readers.

And yet, at the same time, had I no readers, I suspect I would continue this blog. I need to write it. I need to silence the critic in my head that insists that nothing is good enough, thought through enough, comprehensive enough, to print. I need a place to work out how to cope with the ambiguities that sometimes render me incapable of moving forward.

It really is this---or go crazy. :)