The Return

Apparently when a blog or other social media site is too infrequently updated, it's called a "ghost town".  Not so much because it's haunted, just abandoned.  I can sort of see the tumbleweed rolling down main street past the vacant windows of the General Store, with a faded sign that says Bread and Honey is on sale.  

My last post here was May 3.  Today is September 7.  That's a long lonely time away, and I'm feeling rather melancholy about it to be honest.  Not guilty, not even really apologetic.  There have been good reasons, and any reasonable soul taking good enough care of themselves would not heap shame upon their own heads for such a thing, even in the best of times.

But this has been anything but the best of times.  It's been an over-the-top, prolonged, never-like-this-before (see how I avoided the use of the word "unprecedented"?), epic-for-all-the-wrong-reasons time, and there's been way, way too much else to do.  And that's just true as truth is when there's not just a pandemic rumbling about, but you're also leading and loving a faith community through it, and attempting ridiculous academic goals on the side.  I might mention some unexpected family stuff, plus taking on five weddings this season, and the significant loss of two friends in places far away but close to heart, but I don't want things to start to sound unbelievable.  I can hardly fathom it myself.

Hence the melancholy.  And the fatigue.  And the need to ruminate a whole lot more before I begin to write too much about all the layers and orbits and realms and landscapes I have felt swung into these past nine months or so.

I guess all I wanted to do today with this particular post is to throw open some shuttered windows and shake out some dusty sheets covering whatever furniture is still in here at this point.  To sit in here for a while and remember a way of being, and to start again, again.

It's crazy because so many of the "other things" there was to do involved writing.  I'm not sure I've written so much in every given week than I have over the past nine months.  This included assignments and a research paper and sermons and countless email updates and daily Facebook postings.  And yet, I'm keen to pull an old metaphorical desk beside a newly opened window, open my laptop, and write something fresh.  Make it count, make it new.  Chase away the ghost town feeling and let this live into the wider spaces I've been exploring while I've been away.

Wider spaces, like loving people whose views on some important things turn out to be very different than mine in ways confusing, and would be scary if I didn't already trust and love them.

Wider spaces, like moving with intentionality up and out of my own comfort zones to reach out, when everything in me is screaming that it's terrifyingly dangerous out there.

Wider spaces, like being led into innovation and experimentation when all I crave is normalcy.

Wider spaces, like never, never losing the power of human "touch" in the hands-off, high-tech world forced upon us by a global pandemic. 

Those spaces, and more, because it's not done, this exploration, this living, this learning, this becoming.

So.

I have good intentions.  Even have things mapped out over the next few months to write and ponder and wonder and posit and all that kind of thing reflective folks like me tend to write about.

We'll see.