Dec. 1, 2023
“Until we can live every day of our lives motivated by love, rather than by fear or people in authority, this Gospel will not work. It will not change you or me, and it will not change the people around us. Let’s begin anew.”
Those are the closing lines of today’s email devotional newsletter I receive daily from Father Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation. I’ve been an ardent reader and fan of his for several years. I particularly love the emphasis he places on the ancient tradition of mystics in our faith, as I too find my pastoral identity interconnected to Christianity's mystic tradition.
What particularly struck me was this last sentence: “Let’s begin anew.”
You don’t know this, dear readers, but this blog that you are reading is a passion project that has been more than three years in the making. In fact, I started building it in the dark days of the pandemic, when we were all locked away in our homes, wondering if we’d ever see a return to normal life.
However, I guess you might also say that this blog began some 30-plus years ago when my college roommate and friend convinced me to follow him into the mass communication department at the university we attended. That invitation has led to a lifetime devoted to writing. Sure, there have been professional pursuits that have been distractions along the way, but I’ve always known in my heart that fundamentally I am a writer. It is how I make sense of the world, and how I best express my thoughts.
And so, with the extra time provided to me thanks to the pandemic lockdown, I started this blog. Frankly, it was to be a hobby: a place to collect my lifetime of writing for my kids, who might one day look back and think, “What did Dad actually spend all of his time doing all those years?”
I never intended for this blog to do much else other than to serve my own selfish purposes. … Until a year into the project.
In the summer of 2021, the media company I work for asked me to begin writing a weekly column about “faith,” given that I also am an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. “Brilliant!” I thought, “I can combine my passions for writing and for pastoring!” And, frankly, the endeavor has blossomed more than I could ever imagine.
Forum Communications Co. has been publishing the column each week in about a dozen and a half publications and their corresponding websites for the past two years. And the column has gained a fan base I never would have expected. Each week I receive emails from readers grateful that I am discussing faith topics in their community newspaper.
So, as I continued to build this blog, I began to see a new calling for it, a place that not only could serve my selfish hobby of collecting my writings in one place for my loved ones, but also as a place where I could write about “faith” on a regular basis, not just once a week in newspapers. It was becoming apparent that there were people seeking out such writing.
But, before I ever attempted to “go live” with the blog, I wanted to have a foundation on which to build. And recently I completed the Quixotic quest to upload all of the professional writing to which I have access that I have done over the past 30 years to give readers a sense of who I am as a person, a writer and a pastor.
And now here we are. … After hundreds of hours, that task has been finished, and this blog now contains more than 1,330 pieces of writing I’ve completed in a lifetime of writing. … Foundation built. No more procrastination excuses left. Time to “begin anew” as Rohr’s email devotion told me this morning.
Why do I say “begin anew,” you might ask?
Well, full admission ... I’ve tried to kick this blog off with other posts in the past. But once posted, they always seemed premature, as if the blog was only half baked. And after each one, I’d return to this project only being a hobby, a labor of love. … Which, of course, always allowed me not to go public with the blog!
But now is the time. I feel it. ... I sense it as a direction in my pastoral calling … I trust the signs that our Holy Spirit sends us enough to know that receiving this devotion from Father Rohr on Dec. 1 is not a coincidence. This day -- the start of a new month and the beginning of Advent -- is ripe for a new beginning!
And, much like when I realized it was time to stop running from being a pastor, I know that now is the time to stop running from publishing this blog.
So this is it, dear readers.
Welcome to “Finding Faith … in” … a blog that will explore finding “faith” in … the everyday. Just as the focus of the newspaper column has been.
In my own head, I've often described it a blog about “Everyday theology: A place where we find faith in the cracks and crevices of life.” … I hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed building it.
Stay tuned!
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