This site replaces two blogs—my personal blog, The Spyglass, and my sermon blog, Of a Sunday. The Spyglass went dormant about five years ago, and the sermon blog went silent when I left the church I had been serving for seven years. I’ve still been writing, it just hasn’t been posted anywhere. I’ve still been collecting articles and ideas, I’ve just been storing them on Facebook or in Evernote. It’s time to change that.
I won’t do all my writing here, because I’m working on a book on the Sermon on the Mount; I borrowed my working title for the title of this blog. That project continues to be a priority for me, but it does have one great disadvantage: that conversation is only with other books, which don’t talk back. I’m looking forward to starting some conversations outside my own head.
In my previous blogging incarnation, I spent a lot of time writing about politics. I expect to do so far less here. The biggest reason I stopped posting five years ago wasn’t the birth of our fourth child, though the sleep deprivation that caused did play a part. The biggest reason was that I lost hope in the American political process. I didn’t have the energy to keep writing on politics, and I didn’t want to abruptly shift the focus of the blog, so (foolishly) I did nothing. Starting over, I can let all of that go.
I have brought over all the posts from both blogs, though I’ve deleted a number of duplicates and near-duplicates. The importation process mangled a lot of the formatting, however, and I haven’t cleaned it all up. There were over 1900 posts imported (rather fewer now), and I may have fixed half of them. If you happen upon a post for which the formatting is still a mess, please drop me a line through the contact page at the top of the site and I’ll try to get to it fairly soon.
I’m sure there will be more to fix, and more to tweak, but in this world, the search for perfection is often just a way to never get started, and it’s time to get started. For now, I’ll leave the last word to the great Mark Heard.
Rise from the Ruins
There ain’t nobody asks to be born;
There ain’t nobody wishes to die.
Everybody whiles away the interim time
Sworn to rise from the ruins by and by.The engines are droning with progress,
The pistons are pounding out time,
And it’s you and me caught in this juggernaut jaunt,
Left to rise from the ruins down the line.We will roll like an old Chevrolet;
The road to ruin is something to see.
Hang on to the wheel,
For the highway to hell
Needs chauffeurs for the powers that be.Go and tell all your friends and relations;
Go and say what ain’t easy to say.
Go and give them some hope
That we might rock this boat
And rise from the ruins one day.Did you ever try to carry water in a basket?
Did you ever try to carry fire in your hand?
Did you ever try to take on the weight of the everyday freight
Til you find that you’re too weak to stand?Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Why so downcast and desperately sad?
We can walk, we can talk,
We ain’t yet pillars of salt,
We will rise from the ruins while we can.
We will rise from the ruins while we can.Words and music: Mark Heard
© 1990 iDEoLA Records
From the album Dry Bones Dance
Image: Halloween Bird, © 2009 Ms. Phoenix. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.