I want to take one of these posts, this one, to discuss the past and the future, hopefully spending no more than a moment of the present. It's always better to live it than it is to hash it over...unless the "hashing it over" is the kind that brings change to life. That kind is pretty OK. Apparently like everything else, it's more complicated than I thought.
I read a story once by Brother Andrew. Back in the day, Brother Andrew smuggled bibles into Communist Europe at great personal risk. He also made a point to attend some of the non-sanctioned churches there to to encourage the believers. He went to one such church and the old rector that served there invited him to their service. When Andrew showed up, he thought he had the time wrong, because even though he was directly on time, no one else was in the church. About 30 seconds after he sat down, the old rector came out and delivered his message...to Andrew only.
Andrew asked him about all this afterward. The rector said that no one had come in about 4 years or so because they were afraid of being arrested. Andrew asked him why he preached to no one. The rector said something like, "Just because no one is sitting there doesn't mean my words aren't used by God for things I don't understand." And, "God called me to preach. He didn't say I needed to have people there to hear me." I read that when I was a teenager a life time ago and both the truth and the depth of it has stuck with me.
I started writing this blog a little over a year ago. My wife had been poking at me to write for years. A friend (Todd Koonrad) who reads this from time to time used to challenge me to write stuff down after our long conversations - which are really the only kind he and I usually have. I did a couple times but that exercise somehow didn't have quite enough definition to allow me to focus much. That focus part is something I need.
Separately, his wife (Lorrie) said to me at a dinner at their house one night, "You should blog." I decided she was right and the blog format seemed to provide the focus part. Hence, Wanderin'.
I'm writing now and some people are reading what I write. I am very much amazed. It's funny, I often get the best feedback on entries that really didn't thrill me at all...and often hear nothing about entries that moved me to tears. That's OK. The entire exercise hits me like putting messages in bottles and throwing them into the ocean. You never know what's going to cross the ocean and find an audience or what's simply going to sink to the bottom. Regardless though, you still show up at the shoreline with your bottles and scraps of paper.
I've had a couple people ask me about making Wanderin' available in print media. I'm investigating that path but I promise you this: It will be a slow process. Practically speaking, it's not terribly difficult or expensive. However, a print offering would be something quite different. It is deserving of it's own form and vision...and I don't have any of that yet.
And so, on we go...whether or not you actually continue to show up, a la Brother Andrew's East European church of one. God willin' and creek don't rise (the runner up for the title to this blog entry-I'll likely use it next year), I'll be writing more of these in the coming year.
Day to day experience is the inspiration for what goes on here. We tend to chop that up as "circumstance" and "spirituality" and other things, imagining we can separate parts of our life experience out and put them in different boxes. You can give that approach a go if you want but it will all turn out to be part of the whole of your life in the end and probably sooner than that.
So...Happy New Year! I hope you and the ones you love do well in the coming 365 days. I hope and pray that you grow closer to other people and to God and that you feel the joy and truth of that. I hope this space contributes to the growing closer, even if the contribution from this corner is only by small degree. Let's do this again next year, God willin' and creek don't rise.
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