My Two-hundredth Blog
Written by Dan McDonald: aka the Panhandling Philosopher
This blog is my 200th
blog. I am including a photograph of me for free. It probably is no great prize
as I tend to like other people’s photographs but when I see my photograph I say
something like “OK, you’ve seen it, now let’s move on, thank you!”
Photo taken in a meadow in front of the church where I
attend
I’m not sure I gained much wisdom in
writing these 200 blogs. But looking back on the experience of writing 200
blogs in 27 months has definitely left me with at least one impression.
The chief impression I am left with
is how forgetful most of my blogs have been. I don’t mean that other readers
have forgotten them. The truth is to remember the first blog I offered on my
blog spot, I had to scroll back to the beginning. I didn’t have a clue what my
first blog was, and I wrote it in February 2013. It has made me to think of
thinking, writing, and blogging like eating food. There are few dinners we eat
that we can remember months later, but they have had their impact on us even if
they are not specifically special or able to be remembered. There are few times
when a dinner is so special we remember it for months to come. I am learning
that my writing is that way as well.
This made me think of how as an
Anglican, for most of this millennium, I learned a simple table prayer that
goes with every meal whether an ordinary meal or a “dine at your finest
restaurant” affair. Maybe when we sit down to read a book or when we sit down to
think and write a piece for a blog we should think of this as sitting down at a
table to take in or prepare food for the mind and soul. Then the same Anglican
table prayer would resonate with our activity whether what we read was
something common to be read and probably forgotten or something special to be
remembered as a great event. We would pray: “Bless O’ Father, these gifts to
our use and us to thy service. Make us mindful of the needs of others and
grateful for all thy blessings through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Swordfish at Becco Restaurant
– 355 West 46th Street, New York, New York
For me, one of the memorable dining experiences
was eating swordfish at Becco’s an Italian restaurant in the area known as
restaurant row along Manhattan’s West side not far from the theater district. I
ate the dinner alone when the person I was scheduled to meet had to postpone. I
felt a bit sorry for myself but I did want the experience of eating at a fine
Italian restaurant. At first the table next to me was also empty, but soon
three ladies were seated there. I tried not to look over at them too much, but
I undoubtedly failed because we hardly ever fail at anything so much as when we
tell ourselves not to do something. If we want to succeed at not doing
something we don’t preach “don’t do this” to ourselves but rather we set our
minds on doing something else. Trying not to look at three attractive ladies
when you are sitting alone in a restaurant probably didn’t succeed very well.
Hopefully my gawking was kept to a minimum. But I did notice how their eating
differed from mine. I was trying to absorb the whole of a Becco’s experience
whereas they were eating like they would be back and so took ordinary eating
portions. They had salads and some pasta and called it a meal. I remember
hearing them talk of the show and their dance routines. Evidently they were performers
on Broadway. In other words they were simply working folk meeting at a
restaurant while I was traveling a long distance to New York City to experience
something I had never before experienced.
My first blog was a review of the movie
Ondine. I actually still like
what I wrote. Believe me there are things I have written that leave me cringing
with things I placed in my blogs. I like writing movie reviews, especially the
kind where I review a movie that I came to love that I think most of my readers
may have never experienced. There were a couple of other early movie reviews
that I can still appreciate when I read them. There was “The Mill and the Cross”
which is a movie that imaginatively portrays a sixteenth century artist
explaining his masterpiece to a buyer of fine art. The artist is portrayed
describing how he places the crucifixion of Christ in a setting in sixteenth
century Holland. The setting of Christ’s crucifixion is in the middle of the
painting surrounded by a living city with people going about their ordinary
lives, scenes brought to life in the movie. The artist explains how Christ’s
cross is in the middle of everything where it is hidden by the townspeople’s
activities. Christ’s crucifixion right in the middle of everything is obscured
only by our being captured in all our daily routines of life. A third movie
review I enjoyed writing was written about the definitely not for kids French
movie entitled “Don’t Look Back”. It
was a psychological horror movie depicting a devastating self-identity crisis
in which the main character is presented by the combination of two actresses;
Monica Bellucci and Sophie Marceau. Maybe what I offered was less like the fine
offering of Becco swordfish and the surroundings of a fine Manhattan restaurant.
But hopefully if I may have offered tasty Polish sausage and sauerkraut; or
some hearty bacon, eggs, and toast with coffee. Hopefully if what I have
written is not memorable it is generally satisfying and leaves the reader at
least in a better frame with which to tackle the day’s activities.
I love to write. It is part of who I
am. Writing is one of the ways I process my thoughts. But most of us writers,
we have to learn that our writing is seldom the vehicle that dramatically
changes our world. I was watching the movie “Entertaining Angels” when I began
to consider what I would write about in my 200th blog. The movie
tells a little bit about the story of Dorothy Day. She started out life with
aspirations of being a journalist and writer. She presented her articles to newspapers
hoping to be published. She hoped to change the world. Eventually she began
feeding, housing, and helping the poor while also co-founding a paper called “The
Catholic Worker”. Eventually the paper had more than 100,000 people subscribing
to it. But a time came when decisions had to be made whether the paper or her community
centers helping the poor were going to receive the resources needed to continue
to grow. She chose to invest her time and resources in her presence among the
poor in Depression era New York City. She invested in Christ’s poor. She
determined that it was more important to have direct impact on a small number
of poor than to have large subscriptions to a periodical preaching about
helping the poor. That is the way food and thinking works. Food and thought are
meant to provide us with strength and energy and direction for our daily
activities. Dorothy Day wasn’t an Anglican, but if she had prayed an Anglican
table prayer, the life’s direction she discovered would likely have been
similar for her activity seems like an answer to that prayer: “Bless O’ Father,
these gifts to our use and us to thy service. Make us mindful of the needs of
others and grateful for all thy blessings through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
An autobiographical work of Dorothy Day’s life
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