Blogging to you, listening to you, and changes have come

About a Year of Blogging to You,

And some Seasons of Listening to You

Written by Dan McDonald while reflective and a bit dour

 

            I grew up when no one had heard of the Internet.  We imagined that as we read books without pictures we had come to begin reading what was important.  But in the day of the blog, it is always important to have the right pictures.  Today’s blog has no pictures.  I present some thoughts and sentiments after a year of writing blogs and a few months of listening to a whole new group of bloggers and some Facebook friends, and some Twitter friends.  I’ve learned some things, probably forgotten some too, and I think have changed a little and need to change some more.  That is what this blog is all about.

            I am writing this blog with a few different fonts.  I wrote with a sort of whimsical font for my title because this blog is the sort of piece someone writes when still affected by an Ebenezer Scrooge morning after experience.  He pulls his hair out and makes crazy faces because he can’t take himself seriously anymore as if life is all about his business and his interests.  He realizes he is absurd and discovering that we are absurd is sometimes as close as some of us will ever come to being able to see ourselves created in the image of God.  I think that is true in some paradoxical manner.  When I take myself seriously I am almost always far removed from God.  But when I see myself as absurd I am often at that moment nearer to the Kingdom of God than at any other time.  I wrote my introduction in ordinary script because it was ordinary.  I write this paragraph in a sort of friendly cursive manner to say I am trying to write this blog as a heart-felt letter to the friends I have known for a long time, to the new friends I have discovered in recent months, and to say that all of you the old friends and new friends are all a part of me, whether I am so new to you that you don’t know what to make of me or so old to me you don’t know what to make of what has happened to me.  I am writing a heart-felt letter to all of you to tell you what has happened since I started blogging a year ago and listening to an ever growing diverse group of people whom I know perhaps mostly by the internet, but the distance and virtual-ness of the internet doesn’t mean you aren’t true friends. To all of you this blog is a letter from my heart.

 

                Q.  What have I learned in a year of blogging and a few months of listening to others?

                                I am writing of truth I have learned sort of like framing a catechism.

                A.  I have learned to appreciate two things; diversity and Jesus beyond the camp.

1.  I have learned to appreciate diversity.  I have gotten to know people who when I first heard them speak with their different perspective than mine I wondered if they were some sort of crazy.  But then as I listened I realize that sometimes you made some sort of sense.  And sometimes it scared me because sometimes you made a whole lot of crazy sense.

We live in a diverse world, and none of us are ever comfortable with diversity.  I laugh at those who say how much they love diversity and then tell about how they hate the narrow confines of that place from which they have escaped.  The reality is that often the little groups we came from that we have learned to be ashamed of, they too are part of the diversity we somehow imagine we love because we have learned to despise something of a former narrowness.  That is what diversity is, it is living in a massive society composed of all sorts of groups with their narrow perspectives and it is only as we listen to one another sharing our narrowness with another narrowness that little drops of rain fall into mud puddles, run off into creeks, merge with other creeks, enter a river, merge with other rivers, become a mighty river and empty into a vast ocean.  Appreciation of diversity is the journey taken by a drop of rain looking to find its way to a vast ocean.  Beloved this appreciation of diversity usually began for us in the narrowness of our little backgrounds.

2.  The other thing I have been learning is that Jesus is discovered beyond the camp.  I was learning this by getting to know people that weren’t part of my original camp or tribe.  I think of a couple of ladies, one that I almost didn’t follow on my Twitter page because I thought from something she said one day, “wow she is really liberal.”  But as the months have passed I have realized that she is probably to the left of me on some things which doesn’t make me necessarily right on those things, but I have realized that she prays the lectionary and finds Christ probably more consistently than I ever have.  Listening to people from varied camps has changed me.  I’ve learned from people with a passion for social justice that there are injustices that should anger us and break our hearts.

I realized how much all this had changed me the other day when I was writing about some things I had thought about in connection with having watched the German movie “Downfall.”  A year ago I had written a blog about Sophie Scholl.  I had watched the movie “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days” and had read a book entitled Sophie Scholl and the White Rose by Jud Newborn and Annette Dumbach.  Sophie Scholl is one of my heroes from history.  I suppose that part of the reason is that I am an older man that didn’t marry a young woman when I was that age when young men marry young women, and she was a young woman who was executed for standing for justice before she could marry a young man.  Maybe that should or shouldn’t be part of why you find someone to be one of your heroes, but I’m sure that is part of it for me.  I’ve imagined, and though it won’t likely happen for me, that someone who gets the chance to bring a little girl into the world could do worse than naming the little girl “Sophia Magdalena" in honor of Sophia Magdalena Scholl.

I say all that to say that when part of my blog this past week was connected to Sophie Scholl I didn’t link what I had written about her.  I didn’t because I felt that I had too much described her life in relationship to Jesus, as if a way to present Jesus as understood by my tribe.  I realized that is not really how Jesus came into our world or how he remains a part of our world.  He came particularly as a Jewish man, I know that and am not arguing about his coming to a specific time and people.  But he came also as importantly to be part of the whole of humanity who could heal a Syrian woman or declare with great joy how a particular foreigner had more faith than he had seen in any of his countrymen.  He came for the world of humanity and not just for a little camp.  When the Pharisees or Sadducees tried to own him he let them know they did not.  When John and James tried to own him he let them know they did not.  When Simon Peter tried to own him he said “Get thee behind me.”  He comes into the midst of our humanity and we all try to form camps and tribes around him and claim to own him within our camps and tribes but we never get to.

That is what I’ve learned.  So now if I write something about Christ I want you who read it to feel like this Jesus has taken his place right in the middle of our humanity, each of our own expressions of humanity and he is right in the middle of our humanity.  He has come into the middle of humanity to speak to the whole of humanity and yes in that to you and me.  He is speaking in the midst of humanity and to all of humanity whether we are hearing him say to us “O ye of little faith” or “To him who has ears to hear” or “Well done good and faithful servant”.  I want that when I write about him to make you feel whatever camp or tribe it may be in which you reside that he is speaking from the midst of humanity to the whole of humanity, and addressing you as to your whole humanity.

That is my story of a year of blogging.  That is my dream for days ahead.

 

Sincerely yours

Dan McDonald