Sunday, July 17, 2011

Starting a conversation


Blogging is one of those things that I've been meaning to get around to doing for a long time. Before I was a preacher, I never imagined that anyone would want to read my thoughts about life. But now, people show up every week and listen to me talk for 15 minutes--that's about 1800 words, way longer than any blog post. When I put it that way, it's a little surprising to find out that anyone ever listens to any sermon, ever...so when someone tells me "I enjoyed your sermon," it's positively astonishing! A blog entry is a lot shorter than a sermon, and you can read it instead of listening to it. So I figured, why not?

But when I actually sat down to write something, I find myself stopping. I get what you'd call "writer's block." It's one thing to talk to one person, or even to write an article for our church newsletter or our small-town newspaper.  But blogging--putting something on the Internet--stopped me in my tracks. And it took a lot of reflection before I could see why. It's not putting ideas out there for strangers that's scary...it's putting ideas out there for friends; all my friends at once. See, whatever label you would put on someone, I can tell you about the time I've spent with someone who uses it: from fundamentalist Christian to pagan to atheist, pinko to Tea Partier to apathetic, all the way out to weird labels like transhumanist, Rennie, and Evangelical Lutheran. They don't talk to each other in person, but they can all find this online. So I imagine all those different people and try to write something that everyone can "get."

That's probably not possible...but it isn't necessary either, is it? Because this doesn't have to be about Pastor Alan sharing wisdom; it's supposed to be about us...a lot of people who have nothing in common except a belief that truth is better than deception. So while I'll be writing here no matter what the rest of you do, I really hope that we will have some real discussions—not debates in the usual Internet sense, but exchanges where people with different ways of looking at the world see each others' perspectives, and their own, a little more clearly. Let's see what happens next.

No comments: