Hello World
Hello World indeed. I turn 35 this month. I was told that this firmly puts me in the “Mid-thirties” demographic but definitely not in the “mid-life” bracket. The world sure has changed a lot since I last wrote a blog post five years ago .
I’m not really sure what this blog will have to offer the world, but I will do my best to articulate my experience of culture and life at this time and my resolution in the face of it. “Culture war” is a phrase often used to describe the times we’re in; the conflict between “liberals” and “conservatives”, “pro-life” and “pro-choice”, social justice and “responsibility”, gun rights and gun safety. Increasingly I am more and more uneasy with the terms of engagement defined for living in and interacting with our society. I know I’m not the only one .
“…you simply can’t get orthodox Christianity into one political mold.”
Tim Keller, https://nymag.com/news/features/62374/
A few years ago, my good friend Joel, shared a book with me: Culture Care by Makoto Fujimura . It’s a bit of an esoteric book – but it had a through line of themes and ideas that resonated with me. A Christian call to empathy and generativity. The former, a willingness to skillfully and patiently listen, understand, and relate to others across typical social boundaries. The latter, a willingness to reconsider a life of consumption, and embrace the act of creating or doing something good to express beauty, truth, and love. The decision to wage culture care instead of culture war. I therefore do resolve to try and do what I can to take this tenuous moment of crisis and be a conduit through which people around me may experience peace, joy, love, beauty, and truth. Which brings me here . And doing crazy things like this:
Will it last? Will these things make a difference? Honestly, I have no idea - but I know that I’ve been blessed to be a blessing and we all gotta start somewhere.
In Other News
We had reservations to camp in Yosemite this past week. Obviously that didn’t happen:
The lemonade still tasted good though.