God, give me the willpower to talk with you,
To confide in you my fears,
To tell you my secrets,
To share with you my joys,
To weep to you my sorrows,
And to listen to your words of guidance.
God, also give me the knowledge to keep my prayer vital,
To try different ways of communicating with you,
To sit in your holy presence,
To bask in your perfection,
To float in your goodness,
And to be one with you throughout this life and in the next.
Amen.
— Ross B. Nodurft
See related entry, “The New Neighbors”
One day, Satan and Jesus were having a conversation. Satan had just come from the Garden of Eden, and he was gloating and boasting. “Yes, sir, I just caught the world full of people down there. Set me a trap, used bait I knew they couldn’t resist. Got ’em all!”
“What are you going to do with them?” Jesus asked.
Satan replied, “Oh, I’m gonna have fun! I’m gonna teach them how to marry and divorce each other, how to hate and abuse each other, how to drink and smoke and curse. I’m gonna teach them how to invent guns and bombs and kill each other. I’m really gonna have fun!”
“And what will you do when you get done with them?” Jesus asked.
“Oh, I’ll kill ’em,” Satan glared proudly.
“How much do you want for them?” Jesus asked.
“Oh, you don’t want those people. They ain’t no good. Why, you’ll take them and they’ll just hate you. They’ll spit on you, curse you and kill you!! You don’t want those people!!”
“How much?” He asked again.
Satan looked at Jesus and sneered, “All your tears, and all your blood.”
Jesus said, “DONE!” Then He paid the price.
— Author unknown
A poser: Is losing your domain name, even temporarily, analogous to losing your driver’s license?
Every year about this time, a month before renewal, my domain registrar always seems to screw things up with my domain name. (The cowpi.com part of the address.) And as a result, my website goes off line for a couple days. Fortunately, it appears this year, my website was off line for only a day. Last year, it was down for ten days. (Technically, my website was not off line. It was still there. All you need is the 12-digit IP address to access it.)
It is something different every year. This time, somehow they managed to mangle my credit card number. So it kicked me into the group that must pay by invoice and check (with an additional $5 inconvenience handling fee). The invoice payment must be received 30 days before the expiration date. Okay, I can accept that, except, the invoice was emailed exactly 30 days before the expiration date—the day it was due! Go figure.
My dad, who just retired from over 35 years of programming in the business world (he started in the 1960s on an IBM 360), would chalk it up to poor management of “programming by committee.” He wouldn’t be surprised. He was always complaining about sloppy programming. The attitude of most managers now days seems to be to rush projects into productions after a bare minimum of testing, and then they’ll manage the bugs. Unfortunately, customers and phone support people have to clean up the human side of the programmers’ mistakes.
Oh well. Life goes on…in cyberspace…
In a comment to my previous entry, Karen asked a question regarding anonymity, spirituality, and weblogging. My reply was too long. It deserved it’s own journal entry.
Do you see blogging as being antithetical to this sort of anonymity?
Yes and no. It depends on why you blog.
If you are into blogging to be famous (sounds funny, but some bloggers are), or to satisfy some need to show off, or to purposely badger people into heated debates, then the answer is yes. This seems to fall under the sin of pride, the devil’s favorite.
If you are into blogging to write down your thoughts, feelings, and ideas in order to share honestly with others, then the answer is no.
I do not think anonymity in the sense of Campbell’s quote is about other people knowing your name or knowing a little piece of your personality through your writing. It is more about trying to conform your will to God’s will. The closer you get, the more invisible you become. From this, one can begin to hold one aspect of the mystery: “You must lose your life in order to find it.”
There is much in Henri Nouwen’s quote, “Life is a gift, not to possess, but to share.” Jesus calls us by name to be part of a community. And in community, we must love, hope, share, help, touch, communicate, be human for each other through all of the pains and joys of life. The friction of being in community will help sanctify us. Anonymity can be found in loving others, by putting others before yourself. Anonymity can be found within community.
Blogging is a form of community. Karen, you are on your second weblog. You quit your first, but something has drawn you back (and many of us are glad). From your point of view, you sense the need or call or pull or push or something to write and share. Maybe your doubt about writing publicly about your faith sounds like the scruples Steve wrote about last week. But what you don’t know is that someone someday has/is/will read one of your posts, and they will make a choice, a small choice, that will lead them closer to God. It is the everyday, ordinary choices that make us extraordinary. They are the choices that bring us closer to God, not always the big ones (although they count too). Oh! The economy of God’s grace…
The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone born of the Spirit.
— John 3:8
(Do not dwell too much on the paragraph before the quote. It can push you into the sinful side of pride. Pride of a job well done is okay, but there is a fine line where it can cross over into boastfulness. Find joy in the fact that you trying to follow God’s will.)
I was listening to this Switchfoot song this afternoon and this stanza jumped out at me. It may explain partly why you blog. It partly explains why I do.
So this is the way I say I need You
This is the way that I say I love You
This is the way that I say I’m Yours
This is the way, this is the way
Learning to breathe…in these abundant skies