Back into the blogging habit for the Fall…

Hey friends and readers of this blog –

Thanks so much for your prayers and thoughts as I stepped away from blogging this summer.  I made a really deliberate effort to dial my activity level back over the past few months, re-center, re-focus, and re-prioritize who I am and what I’m all about… and my what a difference it made.  I felt healthier and saner this summer than I had felt in quite some time, clearer on a whole bunch of things, and really eager to hit it for another year in Bloomland.

A couple things just FYI –

1) Though I’ll be resuming blogging this fall, I won’t be doing it as frequently or regularly.  I made a decision earlier this year that I would try to be one of those really awesome “regular” bloggers out there who eventually drew a really big following because of the steady stream of awesomeness…  Noble goal, but man… that was friggin’ hard work is what that was.  Often distracting.  And sometimes I found myself “digging” for content in a desperate attempt to live up to my blogging goals.  Only in my more lucid moments did it occur to me that if I didn’t have anything to say, maybe I shouldn’t say anything.

Trust me – I’m not disparaging regular blogging.  I think its a good thing.  It’s just that for me personally, the blog needs to be a place that aids and strengthens what I’m doing – a light yoke, as it were – rather than distracts me from the moment or dissipates my energies.

So the plan is this – I’ll post updates on stuff (Bloom stuff mainly) when relevant, and then sound off here and there when I find myself “pregnant” with an idea and needing to just get it out.

2) I will NOT be resuming my Twittering anytime in the near future.  Man… I didn’t realize how addicted I was to the Twitterverse until I shut down my account.  It must have been several dozen times a day for a few weeks that I’d jump on the computer and instinctively start typing “twi-” in the url address bar.  Sheesh.  An addiction if ever there was one.

I gotta tell ya – Twitter’s a sweet medium for communicating.  But for me, again, I found it to be really distracting.  I’d log on there and see that uber-pastor or uber-blogger or uber-missionalguy posted this-and-that, and I read it, and then all day long I’d be stirred up about what they said.  This would happen several times in a day.

Not until, again, I stepped away from it that I realized what a ridiculous waste of emotional and intellectual energy that was.  Even more, I (re)discovered over the past few months that I could simply let all of those (really important?) conversations rage on and on without my input, and that my beliefs and convictions (shock of all shocks) really can stand on their own apart from the validation of the cacophonous voices of the myriads and myriads of Twitterites.  Better, I discovered, not to waste words in the Twitterverse or blogosphere trying to influence the all-important “conversation” (which is really a whole lot of semi-educated guessing, from where I stand).  I’d rather make an actual difference with my convictions in the places the Lord has called me through good, hard, honest work – most notably in my family and the church I’m privileged to serve.

The world really is full of a lot of noise, isn’t it?  On the other side of my season of quietness, I’m glad to feel free enough not to engage with it.  And I’m eager not to add to it.

“Of making many books there is no end…”

But there is a Reality under all the smoke and vapor of human talk that is not often attended to… talked about, yes… attended to, not so often.

So I’m going to attend to my first call, which is to be a sort of mystic… a person of prayer and careful thought… an attender-to the Reality that is God…

And when I speak, I hope, to paraphrase Henri Nouwen, that my words rush out of the silence of Communion with God and lead folks straight back to that Communion… words chastened by all that the Triune God is, and all that He longs for us.

Peace…

Andrew