Blogging Backwards and Forward

I did a little tweaking of this blog yesterday, taking advantage of some new features offered by the blogging application I use.  It is now possible to put links to previous posts in a sidebar, and to do the same with comments placed by visitors to the site.

I liked that because it has the effect of keeping alive some of the posts that seemed worthy of a longer life than that provided by the RSS feed that first launched them into the blogosphere. The same can be said of some of the thoughtful comments made by you who have generously contributed to the kind of dialogue I consider essential in our time.

Most of the changes I have made are cosmetic, but the process gave rise to some reflections on the blogging journey I began in the spring of 2006, now comprising 86 posts (in fits and starts at times) and many excellent comments. From the beginning this effort wasn't a typical blog with timely posts and comments seeking their fifteen minutes of fame before dying a quick and natural death, counting on Google for some form of resurrection in days to come.

Mostly it started as a way of imposing a writing discipline on me, your humble blogger, giving him time and place to reflect on issues that interested him, often at greater length than most blogs. To some extent that modest goal has been achieved. Inevitably, however, those posts slipped quietly to the bottom of the blogger sea, a fate most undoubtedly deserved. A few floated awhile.

I spent 33 years of my life working within a faith community, including primary leadership roles. That work is written into my bone marrow.  Since that had framed so much of what I wrote about over that time I wanted now to see if I could speak with other voices, particularly on issues of social justice.

As I look back I take some satisfaction in the rather wide range of topics I wrote about in those 86 posts spanning four years.

Stylistically, there were pieces that were whimsical, autobiographical, sarcastic, humorous, angry, analytical, persuasive, and hopeful.

Topically, I wrote eight pieces about baseball--in the same way that Moby Dick is about whales, of course.  Over 25 pieces fell into a pretty eclectic category I would describe as social/cultural. It was a political season and I wrote about 20 essays on faith and politics. A lot of those were pretty passionate. There were around ten pieces on blogging and technology, several focusing on its cultural significance. There were others that just need to be tagged "miscellany."

And then comes Ashley, my now two-year-old granddaughter. Have I mentioned her unparalleled beauty and amazing intelligence? She was around only half the time since this blog began, but seven essays deal entirely with her.  Disproportionate, you say?  Deal with it.

But in another respect, all of it is about her, whether looking backwards or looking forward. I haven't tried to do a word count to see how many times her name shows up in other posts not devoted entirely to her, but I suspect many. Her presence in my life has been transforming because it has placed a human face on the future. No longer just something out ahead, the future has become personal. If words mean anything (and I think they do), then I want is to find words that in her name proclaim justice, embrace joy, and embody hope.

In other words, this blog is for you, Ashley.

Broken Dishes

I was in the living room sipping my morning coffee and skimming the newspaper when the dishes tumbled from the shelf and crashed to the floor in a cacophony of sounds--smashing and thudding and cracking and splattering. The cats flew across the room as if shot from a cannon and did not resurface for hours.

I ran helplessly to the kitchen, hoping to salvage a favorite mug or retrieve dishes used for special occasions. But there was little salvation to be had for the occupants of the middle shelf in the second cupboard to the right of the sink. All they could hope for was to survive as one plate out of a set of four--not really a meaningful life for a plate raised in a plate family. The verdict was a bit less brutal for the surviving mugs. They can be loners, never having to let on that they were once part of a mug community.

I swept up the broken pieces and went searching for the shards of glass hiding in corners, under appliances, and clinging to the bottom of my slippers. Apparently I had ingested an insufficient amount of coffee because my mind started to wander a bit. I began to wonder where this incident in my cupboard fit into the so-called natural order of things. Broken dishes are part of the Cosmos too, you know.

The shelf had tipped because it was missing one of those little pegs you stick into the sidewall of the cabinet. They cost about 20 cents. You're supposed to use four. We had three.I have to admit that I knew the dang peg was missing. It just seemed that some of the dishes were counter-balancing the shelf and holding it in place. I figured it would be okay if I just let it go until I remembered to stop by the hardware store.

Enter the Revenge of the Cosmos. Actually, it's not the wages of sloth I'm thinking about here. I'm aware that a little intervention the day before, even the week or month before, would have saved all this grief. That's the self evident piece of learning.

What I'm wondering about is far less evident and not really answerable. It's had months, maybe years, so why this moment to fall? There was no one in the kitchen. No exterior activity that lightly bumped the shelf into catastrophe. In the silence of the kitchen, with nary a warning, the shelf belched its contents onto the floor.

In Africa they say you die for only one reason--your time has come. I never found that comforting when I was in a car lurching over dilapidated Kenyan highways, the vehicle in the control of an African holding those views. What if his time has come, but mine hasn't? Who decides this?

But to follow the point, maybe that shelf and its contents simply had run out of clock. Maybe it's nothing more complicated than "their time had come." But if you buy that, don't you also have to accept that all of us are just hanging out until the Cosmos notifies us to gather up all our worldly belongings? Seems kind of a cynical way to look at one's life. I don't have a clue how to answer that, but maybe this will tell you something about how it played out with me.

Yesterday I went to the hardware store and bought a whole package of those little pegs to secure the shelves in our cupboards. I consider this a triumphant declaration on behalf of life and its meaning.

And anyway, it was only a couple of bucks.