I’ve read several times not to blog about your blogging. Cardinal sin, that, mostly because people want to know how to do things: how to achieve bliss, how to find happiness, how to discover God or orgasms or the next big thing, each of them in five easy steps (or less). And a blogger talking about his blogging is going to pretty much torpedo any of those enterprises. Not helpful. Not helpful.
So what might be the worth of me admitting that I’m a little bi-polar (this is a metaphor, just to be clear–irony intended) given that there are times when I literally sit in a stupor at my computer, staring (though thankfully there’s been no drool yet), and then next day, I rush at the work of the day with the energy of a terrier, pounding at my keyboard like a literary Rachmaninoff? I surf, I troll, I read, I research. I fall in love with Tweetdeck, then Flipboard, then Hootsuite, then some piece of theological or aesthetic writing that makes my head explode, and then I’m off to hang out with my latest writing project (eighth draft of a play entering its third year of work), my camera (I have pictures to post, but I don’t for some reason), some random piece of poetry or music I’m preparing for who knows what reason, and finally, I run to my wife, who thankfully, blessedly, interacts with me in ways these other things just don’t.
So no, this post is not about blogging; its about process. I just need to start tossing out a thought or two without worrying too much about things. I used to yearn to be insightful in some unique and brilliant way, or at least a bit linear so people can follow along, but these days, I can barely get from A to B, much less from A to wherever else A might want to go out past K or L. Nope, the world is doing quite nicely, thank you very much, without any insight on my part, and that will continue to be the case. The world in which we live is a spinning top whipping along in dizzying rounds, and I count myself fortunate to just catch mundane glimpses of beauty, sense, and rational thought as best I can, and chat about them over coffee. The spinning is its own kind of post-modern lovely, though frankly, the sensation-slapping overview doesn’t tell me much about how to go about living a good life, a godly life, or for that matter, a life of love, which I think, in the end, is the point.
So throw hands up in the air, and get to it, I say. A little subject here, a little commentary there, and the ongoing confession that I don’t know much and have a bad case of what Francis Spufford calls in his great book Unapologetic, the “Human Propensity to Fuck Things Up” or HPtFtU for short, (yes, a Rubicon has been crossed, I suppose—never liked the “f” word, and still don’t particularly, but there it is). And–full disclosure– I continue to wish (I’m hanging my head, Mark Demel) I was a big deal of some kind. Will God ever save me from that stupid, ongoing, moronic idea? Well, maybe not, so I’d better just get rid of it myself.
Halting starts at sharing my process as I try to figure things out is all I’ve got. You can join in as long as you don’t get nasty about it. I need to talk about God and how not to talk about him (Peter Rollins), about the HPtFtU (see above), all manner of sexual things (breaking out in a sweat now), and theology and Jesus and art and church-going and non-church going and all the ways in which I’ve got to figure out how to move forward into the kind of life I think I was maybe born for. It’s a life I can see from here…sort of…and yes, I know, I know, it’s all a story I tell myself anyway. But all I know is…it’s time to go. Time to get on with it. Join in the fun if you’d like. Just don’t bother getting nasty about it. I’m pretty sure all my readers (both of them) know more than me, so I’ll be looking forward to being instructed. But know this–I’m all about civil conversation, and haven’t got a thick enough skin to really deal with people virtually shouting at me. I have enough trouble when people do it in person. So please, have mercy. Oh, shoot…say what you want. Maybe I’ll take a page from Richard Beck over at Experimental Theology (One of the great blogs on the planet, if you don’t know about it) and post the best of the worst, foul-mouthed comments, and we’ll all have a go at deconstructing them. I’m not sure I’m that brave. But we’ll see.
I’m sure curious about a lot of things. Confused, perplexed, even tormented. I’ll see if I can come up with a list of questions (I’ve done that before) that we can all salivate over. Of course, huge swaths of the planet are quite sure about the answers to each and every one of them. Which is a relief. Sort of. Well, not really.
Okay, that’s done. Said and done. A first step. That’s enough. Back to work.
Time to speak…
