TO TALK OF MANY THINGS

Today is this blog’s fifth birthday, if you can believe that. I started it in 2013 as part-journal, part-therapy, part-writing-practice, part nonsense. I don’t want to go on about that; it feels like I’ve spent hundreds of posts doing that.

One of the things I find happening a lot, is the desire to write about something specific, that I then find it impossible to be eloquent about, for some reason. I thought maybe I’d summarise them, as ineloquently as it may be done.

The last one of these (as in the latest) was the question about how, and why the world gets polarised into camps - left, right, red, blue, for this, against that, in this club, hating anyone in the other club. What can be done about that? We’re supposed to be reconcilers, and yet the dry earth snakes with drought-fractures between us until we’re left shouting into our echo chambers.

Then there’s swearing. I had this theory about a handful of words being locked away behind a Victorian picket fence, while all the ‘polite’ words milled around like the Henley Regatta. But I am a non-swearer. And I know that not everyone is, though I truly believe that Jesus-followers should do their best to be. My writing on that came across as condescending to say the least.

And of course, social media. My friend Matt asked me the other day whether I miss being on flumpbook. I was adamant that I did not miss it. Though, I did have to concede that I miss being invited to things. But do I miss seeing my friends and their friends tearing each other’s opinions and character apart in real-time in my feed? Do I miss the political shouting and the entrenched encampments? Do I miss the whole world trying to brand themselves? I do not.

And there are lots of other things I guess I could have waxed on about. I try to stay away from politics, though I do have opinions. I try not to use too much religious language because I know how alien that can feel, and I do try to make sure I pass the THINK test. There are lots of posts in draft because they would indirectly offend a bunch of people, and I don’t wish to do that.

Oh, and I don’t always talk about writing or blogging - I just think that’s a bit meta. Unless it’s the 18th of November and the earth has made a complete revolution of the sun since the last time I did that, and for some reason I think that’s okay. And that of course is where I started five years ago, like the weird combination of both the walrus and the carpenter I think I am.