Wednesday, November 22, 2006

delurk!


Other blogs have posted this graphic and suggested that it is delurking week. Presumably as Turkey and Lurkey rhyme. As we all know, I really am a slave to trends, and I am often curious when I compulsively check my sitemeter and see unfamiliar locales pop up.

So I figure now is as good a time as any. I've been posting here for just over 2 years now. There are probably some people who read me from time to time that I don't know about. So, if you read my blog (even only occasionally), make yourself known! Who are you? where are you? don't you have anything better to do with your time? It will be fun!

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

letters to the president

my friend Claire teaches middle school in Roma TX, and writes fantastic blog posts all the time. Recently, she posted some letters her students wrote about Bush's plan to build a big fence. They are adorable and interesting, and I think you should read them too.

This might lead us to some interesting discussions about civic participation and voicelessness or, uh, immigration issues.

Friday, November 03, 2006

writing and waiting

As I was surfing the internet today (to stave off writing, ironically) I encountered this lovely blog post by my acquaintance Jessie on writing. Jessie is working on her dissertation right now, so writing is more central to her academic life than mine, but some of her thoughts resonated with me. At first I was thinking about writing and future in the sense that writing now guides my future – gets me into PhD programs, gets me jobs, gets me recognition. Also, especially if I publish the things I write now, I am committing to defend those ideas in the future, or at least continue to speak knowledgeably in that subject area.

Jessie’s reference to Habakkuk is really nice, though, and not just because it’s my favorite minor prophet. I was thinking about her suggestion that “writing and waiting have so much in common.” Jessie talks about active waiting, but I was thinking too about hope and trust. The upcoming season of Advent reminds us that we are in a constant state of waiting and hoping for the second coming and the new Jerusalem, but smaller bits of waiting also include hope and trust. Writing, for me, is often an exercise in hope and trust. I write in the hope that things I write will be useful and enlightening to me and others in the future. That my articulation of ideas will provide insight and possibility to others. Perhaps high hopes for an academic essay or a Friday afternoon blog post, and of course I don’t expect every word that crosses my keyboard to be brilliance for the future. I do, however, write in the hope that what I am writing is good and useful and will be good and useful in the future.

And I trust that God’s revelation will work through my academic muddling and make its way to me and others through me and my work. That is, I suppose, an outcome worth waiting for.