Whither Fandango?

That's my question for myself, and one for which I don't have a sure answer.

After all these years I feel like I've kind of run out of posts that once made up the lion's share of the writing here. That would be (1) the teacherly (and I hope encouraging) posts about Bible passages and (2) the snarky critiques of churchy things. Just to let you know, I'm reading my Bible devotionally (and with great joy) and journaling through Mark, but I'm not inclined to refine my journal notes into blog posts, at least not just yet. That may come later.

The other theme of this blog has been book notes. What I'm reading, what I'd like to read, what others have recommended for me to read. I had wanted to use the blog to help me retain such recommendations, but I haven't actually accomplished that. I think the future of Fandango in the near term will be more along these lines.

Then of course there's the music posts, and the occasional poetry. I hope to keep that going. I see this becoming a book-chat sort of blog now, with the occasional faith-content. By the way, in case anyone's wondering, though I suppose in some ways I'm less of a faith-blogger now than at one time, I'm not having a crisis of faith or anything like that. I've kind of peeled off from the crowd (no disparagement to the crowd intended, it's just something I had to do) and I'm simply not masquerading as a teacher or faith-guru for anyone. I've been getting with a few folks at the beginning stages of a local church-plant, and I'm feeling inclined to hang with them and talk about Jesus, working out in fear and trembling what God had been working into me.

Selah.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

So it's 12/31, is it? Where has the time flown?

This is the . . . let me see . . . 266th post of the year, which seems about average for me. Oh, and it's the 1865th since I started. Sheesh!

I'm actually enjoying blogging these days, and I do have some plans. For example, I'll be starting a new music series called Murder-Songs Monday. No I'm not getting all morbid in my old age, but I thought a little lighthearted ditty about death wouldn't hurt now and then. Seriously, I think I can sustain the murder-song series through the coming year (52 murder-songs), after which I'll switch to, I dunno, songs about puppy dogs or something. Stay tuned.

The general idea is of course to broaden the subject matter of this blog to include all my interests. I've been using the Internet to find music, especially lately Americana and folk music, and so I'd like to share some of that now and then. I'll also be posting, of course, about the books I'm reading, the films I've watched, etc. The usual blogging fare.

On the other hand, I'm not going to wander too far from the faith-focused blogging that has always been the common thread around here. My feeling is that we get quite enough blogging from church-leaders, but not so much from the rest of us, so I feel it's a kind of a blogging-niche for me (for whatever that's worth). My series on our rather fitful search for a new church will continue. Again, stay tuned.

I'm going to try to do at least one devotional post per week. Of course the words "I'm going to try" might as well mean "I'll never be able to," but, well, yes, I'm going to try. I'll be reading through the lectionary this year, and it will be helpful to me to regularly write something about what I'm reading, and maybe a few other people will find it helpful as well.

Oh, also, I'm continuing the monthly poetry challenge (like it or not!). I aimed at one poem per month last year, and met the challenge (quality is a only a secondary priority). Same deal this year.

So that's about it. Happy new year to one and all. See you after the zero flips to one!

Not Top Ten

I love The Internet Monk. Michael Spencer stimulates, amuses, and sometimes even taxes patience, but his is something like what a personal blog, to my mind, should be all about: the vivid and honest reflection of one man's character.

And it doesn't even matter to me that Michael didn't choose my blog as one of his top ten. No sir, it doesn't matter to me at all--even if we might be related! But anyway [sob, sniff] . . . anyway . . . The Imonk is on my top ten, no doubt about it.

So in the hopes of discovering a secret admirer I thought I'd google "top 10 Christian blogs." [Boy, do I not have a life or what?] Stephen Murray, and C. Michael Patton also list their top ten. But I'm not on theirs either.

Oh well, to labor in obscurity seems my lot. But I tell you what, I love Christian blogging. I've received a lot from this motley assortment of mildly chagrined Christians on my blogroll over the past year. May the keyboard always rise to meet their fingertips!

Jubilee Blogging

I’m fifty. I’ve been fifty for, oh, about eleven months now, which means that soon I’ll be 51, which seems a whole lot more mature than fifty for some strange reason. Anyway, when I turned fifty people said, as if to give me something to feel cheerful about, "Hey, congratulations, it’s your jubilee year!"

It seems there’s some sort of superstitious notion going about the Christian world that God blesses people in their "jubilee year." Kind of like that other numerical notion we’ve heard about lately, the one that insists that 2007 is the year of completion! Oh my, this sort of thing makes it hard to tell your friends and co-workers that your faith is very different than, say, astrology!

But I’m off on a tangent. Sorry. What I meant to say was, though I don’t really believe in jubilee years, I have tried nevertheless to think of this year as a kind of milestone, and to use it as one uses milestones. I’ve stopped, rested a bit, and taken stock. Speaking in "spiritual" terms, I’ve tried to get to the core matters of my faith; to leave the peripheral at the periphery. My intention has been to strike for the center and by God’s grace stay there for the rest of my time this side of heaven.

In doing so I realize I’ve been rather cranky at times. Impatient, even. I’ve come to want Jesus, to crave Jesus, and only Jesus. Another way of saying that same thing is, I’ve come to want the Gospel, to crave the Gospel, and only the Gospel. Everything else, especially when it is espoused and promoted in the context of the church or of the faith, is not only peripheral, it is "against" the center. It distracts. It misleads. It is all promises and cajoling in an oh so christian way, but it is really turning the Bride of Christ into a meandering crowd of thrill-seekers.

There, cranky like that. See what I mean? But I’m not exactly repentant about it. I think it’s been necessary. It has been a year of refining. I have sometimes been one ranting great pain in the butt, I know, but I’ve needed for my own sake to call spades, even the christian variety, spades.

So be it. What has been really exciting during these times is to realize that I’m not alone in this refining process. I have found others, pastors, bloggers, writers, struggling with the same issues, and many of them have been mightily clarifying for me. I've heard tell of a veritable movement among Christians to re-focus attention on Christ and His cross. Perhaps the Gospel Coalition is but one aspect of that growing movement. And I think most of the bloggers on my blogroll would fit the bill as well.

So here's the deal. I don't promise to never be cranky again (well, not until the Kingdom comes), but I'm going to try more often to focus my attention on the joyful business of cleaving to Jesus (aka, discipleship). I'm going to link to Christ-centered bloggers more often, and I'm going to post frequently my own thoughts and struggles concerning what it means "know nothing . . . except Christ crucified."

I thank everyone who has hung in there with me so far. I'm feeling strangely enthused!

More of the same, and then some.

I've intended to post something about this blog for some time now. What's "In the Clearing" all about? Or, in other words, why do I do what I do?

When I shut down gratitude & hoopla (I'm still kind of proud of that name) last year, it was because (in part) I wanted to get away from the devotional blogging that was represented there. I wanted to expand beyond those bounds a little, and blog more often about other things that interest and excite me. Poetry, for example. Fantasy literature. Art. History. Baseball. A smidgeon of politics now and then. Even a little autobiography perhaps.

So this was going to be, rather than a Christian blog, a Christian's blog. Do you see the difference? I wouldn't necessarily be seeking to inspire or encourage or educate people. Not primarily. No, this would simply be me thinking aloud about any number of things.

Which of course may cause an intelligent reader to wonder, "What's the point?" If you're not trying to be an influence, if you're not trying to be a "blogger of note," and if you're not trying to attract an ever-growing readership, well, umm, aren't you just muttering into your hat?

Well, sure. Pretty close to that, anyway. But the fact is that I do have readers. And God bless Milton Stanley, who routinely directs them my way. In fact, the comments lately have featured several apparently new visitors. But the point is, this is just me talking. Sure, the blogosphere is overcrowded (as Tim Challies has recently noted) with millions of unimportant mutterers like me, but so what? There's room, isn't there?

So here's what I hope to be doing more of here at In the Clearing. I hope to doing more of the same, and then some. Nifty quotations from the books I'm reading, the ocassional pondering over the state of the church, the occasional biographical sketch, some poetry now and then (more of this than heretofore, I hope), and of course the obligatory look-what-I-found-online post.

On Reading and Blogging

My blogging life began a few years ago as a whim. I thought, knowing myself as I did, that I'd stick with it for a week or two, maybe a month, and then just let it slide. My first and second blogs were Mr. Standfast and Gratitude & Hoopla. My idea then was, at least in part, to be an encouragement to believers. Perhaps even a guide of sorts (sure, don't we all start a project with over-wrought expectations?).

Anyway, I've drifted away from the encouragement motif, as any occasional reader would recognize. I've drifted away from the blogging as ministry idea altogether. Nevertheless, blogging seems to be a part of me (as millions of others can say as well). In the end, it's just me, blogging. Take it or leave it.

My subject now, more often than not, has something to do with the books I've been reading. So, if this blog is anything, it is a reader's blog. Not a lit-blog, for to be that I would have to keep up with (and care about) goings-on in the literary world. No, but I love reading, am around books a lot (I work in a library), eschew television because it's not nearly as enjoyable as reading, and looking back I can honestly say that mine has been a life of one who has often been accused of having his "face in a book."

Okay. So that's what I am. And no book, btw, has given me more pleasure lately than Alan Jacobs' The Narnian. Jacobs is certainly the right man to write about Lewis, for his prose, like that of Lewis himself, has a certain ease about it, a relaxed erudition, and even a joy, as of one who loves to express a thought clearly about something he loves well.

To finish this somewhat rambling post, how about a quote from Lewis himself. In The Weight of Glory Lewis speaks of the real pleasures of this world as hints or markers of something deeper ("the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited"). Then:

Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am, but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.

Jacobs, summarizing Lewis' thought on this matter, adds this: "How can we be released from the evil enchantment that threatens to abolish humanity? Perhaps the greatest resource on which he draws--and it is a mighty one--is, simply, delight. He calls us to take note of what gives us pleasure, for, though our pleasures can indeed lead us astray, they are in their proper form great gifts from God."