So Why Am I Here?

First off, “Thanks a bunch, WordPress, for the huge assist this morning.” I guess it really is a good idea to have another blogging “platform” up and running on standby. I’ve gotta say that Google’s “blogger” has seriously let me down. When I realized I still can’t blog there this morning (and it’s been close to 18 hours), that’s pretty much driven me to put this WordPress template in play.

This is not only inconvenient, but the very important piece I posted yesterday has simply disappeared. Blogger tell me “it’s only temporary”, but this stuff is fundamentally important for me in terms of communication – and that’s not good enough!

Bottom line, communication is the lifeblood of my work and I know I’ll be struggling without it.

The good news is that this problem has made me think more deliberately about what it is that I’m communicating. Am I just rambling (yes)? Or is there an over-arching theme to my writing (I think so)? What – if anything – is the common thread that runs through my words?

Well, there is a lot if content that I come back to time and again – and here’s a partial list:

• The Greatest Story ever Told, and most especially how our lives can be a part of that story.
• Then there’s my family, simply sharing some of the day-to-day anecdotes that get my attention.
• I talk a lot about my role as “The Preacher’s Husband.”
• Related to the clergy-hubby stuff are observations about the living community of faith at First Presbyterian Church of Brandon.
• Another sub-set of that important theme is my ministry to men.
• Sometimes I write about the world scene, events from the news that capture my imagination.
• Then there’s my work, the books and the travel and the speaking engagements…

But – and you can probably tell that I’m thinking out loud here – if I had to shove all this inside one pithy category that might actually spark some kid of a national conversation (something that might move this blog from a curiosity my friends read and into a search-engine friendly tour-de-force), then I wonder what that might be?

This is a good time to ask such questions, because Google letting me down = the possibility of reinvention here at WordPress.

So here’s the bottom line. I’m interested in life. I’m particularly interested in how we engage life in the everyday “get up and do it again” rhythm from day-to-day. And I’m most interested in how we can lift that experience from the mundane and the mediocre and into what is possible.

I’m talking about the end of half measures. No more “good enough,” or “I guess that will do.”

This is how I put it in “GET REAL”. Mediocrity is a sad curse that threatens to suck the lifeblood from many people, people who might otherwise pursue lives that actually mean something beyond the day in, day out of survival. We all know people who constantly regress to the unremarkable. We may sometimes be tempted to follow that path ourselves. It is too easy to fall into patterns of below average, develop a comfortable rhythm there, and consequently live out our lives without ever pushing any kind of envelope at all. (p 119)

My category, it appears, is “The Life that is truly life”. That’s a concept from Paul’s letter to Timothy in the New Testament. It’s a handle I can live with. Google Blogger? Maybe. WordPress? Certainly. My next book? Already in the pipeline…