Where do I take this blog site from here?

Where Do I Take This Blog From Here?

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I have been describing how I retreated from writing blogs during Lent, and how I had retreated from politics for a longer while.  Perhaps now having discovered fresh perspectives moving forward in both blogging and political arenas is possible.  Where to from here?

            Nathan Schneider provided me some great insights regarding my retreat from politics. He had written an article that appeared in the Guardian which you can read here.  He is right that we never escape politics.  Politics, simply defined, is the means by which groups of human beings process information leading to a community’s decision.  Each of us may be individuals, but are also members of groups that seek to make collective decisions and pursue united actions.  We can’t escape politics.  So I will register to vote this week and re-subscribe to the local newspaper.  I will look around for one local activity to which I can conscientiously and joyously give myself as I desire to help make the community where I live be a better place.  This will be how I move forward in the political realm.

            As for my blog, I find myself living in a different world with a different perspective now than where I found myself two years ago.  Progressive Christians are now in my circle of friends whereas they were probably totally absent from my friendships a couple of years ago.  That doesn’t mean I have a desire to set aside my conservative friends.  I am too old to feel wounded by conservative Evangelicals or to have suffered some of the pains I have discovered affected too many younger friends who were wounded by Evangelicalism's extremes.  I do not doubt the stories I hear from them, because we always knew that if people took our Evangelical perspectives to extremes that bad results could happen, but we always wanted to imagine that people didn’t go to those extremes.  For me, for most of my life, it was through Evangelicalism that Christ found me and where I communed with Christ.  So Evangelicalism is something to which (like my parents) I owe much, even though making mistakes.  But I have discovered Progressive non-Evangelical Christians whom I respect and count as friends.  This is for me a big change and also a welcome one.

This has led me to this place where I need to envision how I want to move this blog site forward.  I want it to be a place where my friends; old and new, or old and young; conservative and progressive, can enjoy hanging out.  I want them to feel that they are being invited to a conversation about human life, Christian life, and the varieties of perspectives we all bring to these discussions.  I have no illusions that this will be easy to accomplish, or that everyone will be happy with the conversations.  I especially will be tested because we often imagine we love the concept of freedom, only to discover that when we have lost control of freedom’s conversation, we withdraw from the sharing because we have lost control.  But the conversation or another's will was never ours to control.  Freedom doesn’t mean always agreeing.  Something more important to freedom than agreement, is honesty of expression alongside respect for another’s viewpoint.  Sometimes we have to be honest to keep freedom real.  I have what I think is a wonderful example.  Sarah Thebarge has a wonderful blog.  I was so impressed by how she invites discussion that my goal to invite discussion is little more than my attempt to imitate what I saw at her blog site.  The other day after she invited discussion she wrote a reply blog to one group of responders saying something like “this is the last I’ll mention these things; and I want your opinions, but for those of you who posted from this side I disagree with you for these reasons.”  That sort of honesty is sometimes needed to keep discussion real, for discussion is ultimately not built on a wish dream of our desire for total agreement, but on the bedrock of honesty and integrity.  {wish dream – a term used by Bonhoeffer)

I want to close this blog by offering two songs that help express my goals for this site.

The first song is from the eighties.  Suzanne Vega is singing a song to someone telling them she can be found left of center, and this song resonates with me because my life has been lived mostly right of center.  But these days I am equally convinced that Jesus is the one who is so very willing to hear the sort of plea offered in this song of someone who says “if you want me you will find me left of center, off of the strip, in the outskirts, and in the fringes.”  I want people he found both left and right of center to desire to visit and hang out at this blog site.

            This will only happen if you can trust me. I will have to work for that.  This is a song I used to play on the juke box at Mario’s Pizza when I was in high school.  Ringo Starr had it right about trust - “it don’t come easy”.  But it is trust that I want others to feel when they come to this blog site.