Saturday afternoon. Serious rain. The intermittent thunder/Let's us know/The gods are arriving,/one valley over from the poem New Hampshire by Howard Moss.
I’ve been writing this blog for some days now and it’s turned philosophical, when it really should
be a record of living the God-in-love life. It shouldn’t just be a forum for considering grand themes and responding to criticism (actual or possible) but for considering the life of encountering. What I want for myself is to enjoy the special quality of life inherent in God-in-love and I designed Reflecting & Risking to be tools for encouraging, enabling and enhancing this experience. And I want this blog to convey the quality of this way of life and to demonstrate how R&R works to make it possible, anywhere, anytime, for anyone.
Each blog post should be an appreciation of the history of richness of an encounter (on-off or extended), a trajectory, and this trajectory tracing not of the goodness or badness of the encounter but the drama (how vivid, potent, urgent) or depth (how suspenseful, impressive, intriguing) as God-in-love might experience it. Each post should also inspire and direct me (or readers) to dare and to do. Deeds are risks. Encounters are alive, whether or not we reflect on them. Only in encounters is there presence, adventure, lastingness.
Why do I find this hard to do in this blog?
1. Most of my life is routine, so I don’t meet many new people, don’t find myself often in new
situations. Patterns of hospitality and friendship are already built into the structures of my life, and I’d have to really go out of my way to introduce novelty there. Exploration for me is often in books and ideas, so it’s easier for me to write new things about this practice.
(Why, when I listen to the finale of Sibelius’ 2nd Symphony, do I feel prickling up and down my
legs and moistness in my eyes.)
2. Most of my encounters are with people I know, so I have to be careful of what I say because 1st
they may take exception to or umbrage at my report; 2nd, they may feel uncomfortable having casual encounters turn into ‘appreciations’; and 3rd , they may suspect that encounters were actually engineered for the purpose of generating material for the blog.
3. My life is comfortable, in large part because I choose my environment, my activities, my
acquaintances, so I don’t have many of the difficult or perplexing encounters that would make interesting blog posts.
4. On the matter of style: Do I address the Other directly or refer to it in the third person. Is my
interest in the Other in the blog for the Other’s self (that is, the blog as an extension of the interaction) or as the occasion for the reflections (which relate to the meaningfulness of my life.)
5. Then there is the questions of risking. What does it mean to roll a die and think about
opportunities for some practice? Am I to commit to doing something particular (Look for a chance to...) or am I to be ready for whatever turns up? Am I to think of some Other I wish to encounter, or wait for an Other to show up? If I don’t resolve these questions, the whole exercise of Risking is rather bootless.
6. If I devote the blog to the appreciation of the richness of encounters in literature, the news, etc.,
I’ll be confined to the subjective reports of the participants or else my own speculation. What value will that have for anyone reading the blog?
7. Finally, it’s not clear whether this blog is for me, or for the people reading it. If for me, then my
task is examination of my own life. If for others, the task is clarifying and justifying the processes of reflecting and risking, making them accessible and attractive, as well as expressive of the God-in-love way of life.
No wonder the blog has stuck to the bloodless abstract. If this reflecting and risking process were a private matter taking place in a notebook, or occurring in a group context where responses to thoughts or questions could be given immediately, and where 2nd person/ 3rd person issues could be handled smoothly, these issues would not arise. If this blog were like a book review, with a steady stream of new items to consider, it would be easy to spend time considering particularities and details.
Okay, I’ve clarified the problem. There must be solutions. Let me think.
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