Why do you blog?

Having devoted the last couple to posts giving “excuses” for why I haven’t been blogging it occurs to me that my faithful readers might be asking “Why do you bother?”

(Faithful readers???? OK, OK—stop laughing -- there must be at least 2 people I could consider to be faithful readers –and if there aren’t – don’t tell me --I’d rather live with my illusions)

Anyhow, I thought I might try to remind myself why I do this.

When I first started “Whitfield’s journey” (See Trip to Mississippi) on March 3 2006, it was to keep family and friends informed of our adventures as we traveled to Mississippi with the “BBB” to help with “hurricane relief” work. I continued the entries for that purpose during our follow-on trip through Texas until we arrived home at the end of April.

At that point I was going to quit but as noted in my May 1 entry – “Changing gears” I decided to keep it up. Here’s what I wrote then (with some minor editing to correct some typos)

“ I have had some support for continuing this [blog] – but it will now be for a different purpose. When I started the main purpose was to keep friends and family informed of our whereabouts and activities [while traveling].

While I will continue to record “what’s happening in our lives” –I have found this to be a useful thing for myself – putting my thinking in writing and maybe once in a while getting some push back or affirmation from someone else. If you are reading God bless you and thank you for staying with it.

One other thing – Charlie who is the “I” in this blog. My life partner and wife Linda makes up the “we”. I usually know when I can express something as “we” and when it should be ”I” but occasionally Linda may disagree so to be safe if it is something “weird” that “we” think – it is probably me you should blame for the “weirdness.”.

As I look back – I have had several of my family and friends tell me that they use the blog to keep track of us.

I have also had a several good (mostly email) conversations that started through the blog. I have made friends with several other bloggers that I have met. Mostly due to JD –who is the blogging king as far as I’m concerned.

One other reason is that the time I spend writing helps keep me focussed on what’s important and (despite the fact that it seems I spend too much time thinking (writing) about stuff this focus actually does translate into actions. And so I think writing does keep me on track of doing the things I need to be doing.

I have learned from others and I hope that in some small way sometimes what I’ve written has helped others. So I do it for me – selfishly – but with the hope that my selfishness will flow good to someone else.

Speaking of blogs and blogging

I was humbled (but flattered) to find myself quoted by Bobby Cohoon (http://littlesorrel.blogspot.com/) in his October 22nd post.

My friend JD had carpal tunnel surgery and “The Hand” has become his trademark for this week. John has also taken to posting music clips from http://www.youtube.com/ He devoted a big chunk of one of his recent posts to his favorite singer Chris Tomlin. You can find out more about Chris by clicking HERE.

JD also asks an interesting question about Church Architecture in his October 28th post and gives a partial response the following day. The question was

“If our “church buildings” reflected the heart and mission of Christ, what would they look like? (And we know that the term ‘church building’ is an oxymoron.)”

-- Coincidentally? I came across another blog (via Bobby Valentine) by Wade Tannehill that dealt with a similar idea in “A church without walls”

Bobby been posting (click HERE for his blog) a series of articles starting on September 22nd that deal with our views about the meaning of the Old Testament. He presents a view that it is a consistent story of a loving gracious God who looks to his people to build relationship and who expects his people to love other’s – God is the great Redeemer – who provides the great command – to Love and expects his people to form a great society (relationship) of compassion, respect and love.

I limited my “Berean list” to 33 entries this week and with one “minor” exception on Sunday I kept within my self-imposed guidelines of how long I should spend on it (Sunday I used up more than my quota of time for the whole week by spending several hours composing a too lengthy response to a single question) . AH well.. I do talk too much at times.

It was a busy week. I got caught up on all my course work, gave a midterm and marked those tests. I (more or less) kept up with the housework and feeding Alyssa and I. I got some work done raking leaves in between the rain showers and did a number of other small jobs. (I did this self-portrait by putting the camera on a box and setting the timer. It doesn't do justice to showing the amount of leaves we get in our yard).

Anyhow, now my list of things I’m committed to for next week is at least manageable.

Yesterday I met my friend Russ for a coffee at Tim Horton’s – he is a great guy with a heart for service. We talked about a number of things including how different people see God and how that influenced their lives. Russ will be leading singing on Sunday – first time – and he is a little nervous about that. Thursday p.m. and again this morning (today my Dad went with me) I visited with Mary Seabrook. She is 95 and confined to her bed – heavily medicated – due to a hip problem. They had done surgery a couple of weeks ago but it didn’t seem to work out and there’s nothing more tobe done other than managing the pain. Mary is a lifelong friend of my parents and her daughter is a longtime friend who attends Pinehill. We continue to pray for Mary and her family during this difficult time.

This afternoon, I had a web-cam conversation with Kevin, Will and then Linda & I talked for quite a while. We have talked on the phone but it was great to see her smile. Another 10 days and I’m off to Aurora (Chicago) to meet up with Linda and help her finish out her week there looking after Hunter & Camdyn.

Well that’s it for now.

Maybe I’ll get back to more frequent shorter posts – or maybe I won’t – there are no rules about this.

God Bless
Charlie