on starting a new blog

This new blog has been a long time in the making for me. There are probably a few out there who remember my original blog from my college days. I started it smack in the middle of the early craze. You know, back when these things were all the rage for the new and bizarre exhibitionist-style diary entries. At first, it was a funny phenomenon. As with most technologies, I was a bit luddite in my resistance. Finally I gave in an joined the online journaling community. But eventually I realized that simply making my journal public wasn't enough to motivate me to continue the trend. So I put aside for a few years.

But I think I am finally ready to re-enter the fray. Over the past few years, the approach to blogging has expanded and matured, and what I now see excites me. The possibilities for this medium are relatively broad, in both good and bad ways. I hope, of course, to use mine for good.

I guess I like to think of the blog world, or at least its potential, as a natural extension of local community onto a broader scale. For all my criticisms of other modern fads such as Facebook, the same could be said of their potential as well. If you are well-rooted in your own community, finding purpose and identity on a daily basis, then these tools become less about ego-stroking or image-crafting than they are about creating further opportunities for dialog over the many challenging tasks and struggles that face us humans in our day. These tests are both personal and communal, and as such they demand engagement in both realms. So, I say, shall we not thoughtfully probe these questions and challenges in the quiet places as well as in the furnace of relationships, both local and abroad? That's what I suppose would be the greatest potential use of the blog world.

I've chosen an interesting title for my new endeavor: "A Love Stronger than our Fear". It comes from the title of a song by one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Derek Webb. He wrote it most immediately as a response to the dark times of war in which we find ourselves, looking for a better way to respond to enemies than with violence and oppression. "What would you do if someone put a gun to your head," he questions, "and asks you to tell them a lie? What would you say if you were pushed that way, to betray yourself to keep yourself alive?" These questions certainly apply to life in a world of potentially endless war. But I think they apply more deeply, as Webb also applies them, to every challenge we face within ourselves and around us. "Because there is a day that's been inaugurated, but has not yet come. And we can proclaim, by showing that there's a better way." That's ultimately what I am hoping a lot of the conversation from this blog is about: that better way, the love stronger than our fear.

This is personal for me in so many ways. Even this act of beginning a new blog is an attempt to proclaim that love that overcomes fear. One of my biggest reasons for doing it is to stimulate my long-suffocated impulse to write. I think I have been given an ability to put words to good use. I want to cultivate it, I want to go somewhere with it and steward it. But nothing scares me more than the thought of putting some of my writings - poems, essays, anything, out here for anyone to see and evaluate. What if I'm proven wrong? What if the gift is in my head, made up for my own ego? This is me saying there is a love stronger than that fear, so I don't have to hide under a rock any more, never knowing how God might put my hands to use.

In the same way, this touches the broader areas of life in community for me. Some of my recent readings have given me great hope for a deeper engagement with the world around me. That world meets me daily, in the beautiful fellowship of my church and in the wider, mostly yet untouched community of the broken and hurting world that seeks restoration so badly. I know the One who promises that restoration. Indeed, there is a better way to be explored, to know, to proclaim.

All of life really is interconnected, so this blog won't really have one particular theme. Rather, I simply hope this will be a place where we can avoid shallow intellectual babble, but instead go deeper. For as Richard Foster says, "The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people." I hope you'll join me in this endeavor.

Words from another of my favorite songwriters, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, provide a suitable end to this post/beginning of this blog. These words were written at a great turning point in his life from constant despair to a disposition of hope. I leave you with them: "Maybe the sun will shine today, the clouds will blow away. Maybe I won't feel so afraid. I will try to understand...either way."