I have been posting more but not quite every day. Weekends seem to go by without my being able to bring my self to write a blog post. Last weekend that in part was due to helping some friends of ours in their move. The weekend before 4 of the seven members were changing rooms so that was a big move although all within the parsonage that we inhabit.
So there have been mitigating circumstances. but simply blogging more has surprised me a few people I see on a regular basis have said they appreciate my more consistent posting. I hadn't really expected that, in part because I don't feel I have said anything particularly profound or even revealing. Also, I am not all that satisfied with my style when I am simply shooting off a post.
Also, surprising is the response to the brief comment I made last week about enlightenment both here and on Twitter. Since my Twitter account talks to my facebook account that comment elicited an extended conversation on facebook. I have also had several conversations in person about enlightenment with people who read one or both posts. This brings me back to one of the inspirations for seeking to post daily in Lent: James K. A. Smith's description of his philosophical writing as diaconal, in the introduction of his collection of "occasional" essays The Devil Reads Derrida. The essays collected in this work he describes variously as Public Philosophy, Public Theology, or "philosophical reflection in the service of faithful discipleship." In so describing he sees the church as a "public", and thus seeing in part his calling to be a "public intellectual" for the church. On some level it seems to me that this role also falls to a pastor especially if that pastor like me is a student and a scholar by bent as well as by training. I have taken up daily blogging in part because I was convicted that I was tempted to shrink from this sort of role. I shrank from it in part because blogging at times feels a bit self-centered and vain. And I suppose it can be, though that isn't my temptation I think.
So, I will reflect in the next few days on Jodorowsky's film I saw tonight with some of you who are reading this. I'll reflect some more about enlightenment. As a foretaste: The Holy Mountain on one level could be seen as having an anti-enlightenment message, that is enlightenment at least if it is seen as that which would lead you to see living a "normal" life as an illusion. What was named as an illusion in the end was the very seeking after enlightenment. Or enlightenment is for the film, recognizing the value of life lived and not seeking some other reality or consciousness, but rather to be fully conscious to life lived with all its joys and sorrows and full sense of self. But I suspect that is not all there is. More to come
I don't blog every day, only when I can think of something that seems to be worth blogging about. That's usually every second or third day, but sometimes more than once a day.
ReplyDeleteYa, I have noticed that Steve. I only mention not blogging everyday because I had made that a sort of discipline this Lent. I doubt I will continue to try to post each day after Lent. Part of that discipline this Lent is to explore why I blog. The public nature of blogging has lead me in the course of this blog to obsess about "traffic" to the blog and what people were thinking who read the blog but didn't comment or on the other side feeling oddly burdened by having a blog and thus blogging very infrequently.
ReplyDeleteMy hope is that one thing (among a few)that may come of this intent to blog everyday during lent is a greater sense of balance in my relationship to this blog.