A theological group I am in asked me to talk to them about
blogging. This is what I had to say…
The word blogging is so new it isn’t even found in my old
college Dictionary. One definition is: a web site that contains personal
reflections, comments, and often links to other by the writer. A blog is really
an internet journal.
My own experience with blogging goes back to December
2008. I don’t know about you but my
adult
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| photo by eleaf / flickr |
children are petrified that their folks will be out of touch, laughed at
by the masses, not knowing what is going on and embarrass the daylights out of
them.
So my son said in 2008, “What you need is a blog. You like
to write--you ought to do this. “ I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“It’s a way of communicating and you need something to do.”
He was right about “something to do.” After six churches and
seven Interims my wife proclaimed, “Ok. It’s time to stop. Living out of
suitcases, sleeping in somebody’s else apartment or condo—not ever being at
home—besides you are tired. And I am definitely tired of wearing the preacher’s
wife’s hat.” So like a dutiful submissive husband, which I usually am not—I
said, “Yes ma’m.”
Well, I did need something to do. You retirees know what I
am talking about. Suddenly the spotlight fades and the phone quits ringing and
your business cards are yesterday and nobody asks you your opinions or tells
you how Billy Graham couldn’t hold a candle to you. All this is gone with the
wind.
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| photo by photosteve101 flickr |
So—my son nudged me into the blogging business. Even though
I have used a computer for a long time—I am still a pathetic beginner. So,
taking me by the hand, my son showed me how to begin this new thing. “You’ll
need a title for the blog”, he said, “some kind of theme that will tell folks what
you are writing about”. So—I started thinking and finally came up with a title:
Head and Heart. Subtitle: Roger Lovette writes about cultural concerns,
healthy faith and matters of the heart. I know it sounds pretentious—but folks
I was under the gun.
For years I have said of preachers and all Christians that
we shouldn’t park our brains at the door of the church. I’ve also said if you
come away from a sermon having no idea what century you’re in or what is going
on in your world—or theirs—you have done a lousy job. So—I figured a preacher’s
blog should deal with the real. But it shouldn’t be so heavy and ponderous that
it hardly ever strikes a human chord. The blog ought to tug at the
heartstrings, too. It’s what the black preacher calls “Aunt Jane.” “If you
don’t put some 'Aunt Jane’ in your sermon, nobody will listen.” So I decided to
call my Blog: Head and Heart.
My son, a photographer, set up my masthead and design. And
so that December morning in 2008 I sat
down before my computer and a blank page
wondering what in the hell I had gotten myself into.
What was I going to write about? I could just see this blank page stretching endlessly forward.
And I remembered something that Anne Lamott, in her book on writing, said about
her little brother. He was given the assignment in school to write an essay on
birds. And he sat down at the kitchen table one night and began to cry. “I
don’t know how to write this. I don’t know that much about birds.” And his
father said, “The only way you can write this is bird by bird, Buddy.” Bird by
bird. Start off small and specific. Well—I decided to put my fingers on the
keys and see what would happen. After 40 years of writing sermons surely I
could come up with something. And I remembered a book I had read years ago by
Arthur Gordon who was then an Editor at Guideposts. He wrote, a book of essays
entitled, A Touch of Wonder. And
I remember thinking I wish I could express my feelings like Arthur Gordon. One
day at Seminary James Cox, my preaching Professor asked me one day, “Have you
ever thought about writing? Why --don’t you try your hand with say, the Baptist
Bulletin Service.” On the back of those pre-print Bulletins they had little
articles. I sent one in and they took it. I think they paid me two cents a
word. I got the courage to send in a sermon to Pulpit Digest—and they
took it. Now I have had my turndowns and rejection slips aplenty from Editors
and Pulpit Committees. And each one
hurt. For you see, we egomaniacs want everybody to love us—which is a joke and
a heresy. Ain’t gonna happen.
What I learned about writing sermons and other things was
staring at that blank page sometimes—often—I did not know what I thought I
believed until I put the words down on paper. You follow your head and
sometimes your heart and you never know where this will lead or where you will
come out.
So Christmas 2008 I started. So I wrote about what I knew
and observed. The tiny star my daughter had made in Sunday school fifty plus
years ago. It has hung on our tree every year. I wrote about Christmas cards
and Christmas ornaments and how both took me back, sometimes way back. I wrote
about my tiny Mexican Nativity set and the After-Christmas blues. That first
New Year I wrote about Starting Over and Letting Go.
Since I started preaching and writing—especially writing—I
found myself wanting to talk to those on the edge—insiders of course but
especially the outsiders. I tried to say over and over in all sorts of ways:
“Hey, there’s more to this faith business than you ever thought—and you don’t
need to park your brain at the door.” I have tried not to use too much
Scripture though it is just below the surface in much that I write. But it
still drives the fundamentalists crazy. I try to keep my Democratic leanings to
a minimum but in this day and age I find it very hard. I also try not to be too
judgmental –and this drives some people crazy—they want me to bring out the
hammer. But mostly I want to speak to the head and the heart.
Since my blogging beginnings I have written 731 pieces. Bird-by-Bird,
I guess. I could not believe I have
written this many pieces. One of the
strange things about blogging is that your stuff goes all over the world. I’ve had 80,000 hits in the US. 3,825 from
the Ukraine; 3,786 from France and 3,298 from Germany. 2,577 have read from
Russia and there have been some from India and China and Australia and all
over.
So this experience has given this egomaniac a chance to get
the spotlight turned back on—sort.
But never enough applause which my
fellow-ego-maniacs can resonate with. We just cannot get enough. I believe
there is another word for this phobia.
Emily Dickinson wrote, “Tell it slant.” Tell it different.
That’s why Fred Craddock and Barbara Brown Taylor and Walter Bruggemann and so
many that have forced us to listen. They tell it slant. Now I am no Fred or
Barbara or Walter but I have tried to see things around and within me a little
different. I’ve written about social
issues like: Race and a black President and Selma and Voter Registration and
Immigration and Gay Rights and Torture. I’ve written book reviews of books that
have turned me on like Pat Conroy’s book
My Reading List.
I’ve tackled movies like ”Boyhood” and “The King’s Speech” and “Way, Way Back". I wrote a review of “Unbroken.” I have even
included some sermons—but not many.
Because we all seem to be obsessed with New Spring I
couldn’t help but comment on the Pastor’s Christmas vision about re-writing the
10 Commandments. The baby Jesus seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle. A
little later when he apologized I wrote another piece thanking him for being
big enough to do this and telling everybody we all have to give each other the
benefit of the doubt. Trying to be fair—but as you know it isn’t easy. Even
with people we think are a little crazy.
For about four
Lenten seasons I have tackled The 14 Stations of the Cross as my own
meditations. I wrote two pieces on the war in Iraq and reviewed Dennis Finkel’s
two books,
The Good Soldiers and
The Forever War. I grieved over all these mostly young men
and women who come home in flag-draped boxes and so for a while—about once or twice
a month I wrote pieces called “Remember the Fallen.” Some had been deployed as
many of four times. I plowed through the long, sad list of those who had died
that month—put down their names, ages—where they were from and how they died.
Most were under 25 and many of them had been deployed time after time. But I
finally had to stop doing that—there were too many names and the list was
seemingly endless.
There have been a great number of pieces on personal things
in my life. Buechner in his book,
The Sacred Journey has said that when
we tell our stories it is like we are putting together photographs of our life.
And the hope is that when they see these pictures and these stories it will
enable them to open up their own album of stories and pictures and remember.
Sometimes I have taken excerpts from Funerals for good friends and published
these. Like my cousin Ray who killed himself at age 50—and left me a note
asking me to do his funeral. I wrote about losing my buddy in Tennessee that I
have known for years. I gave a tribute to an art teacher who had made such a difference in our community. I included my remarks at the private funeral of
dear Beth who just drank herself to death before she was fifty. These were a
way, I think of dealing with my own grief. We all do it in different ways. I have written about our anniversary, the
closing of my home church, my kid’s birthdays. I wrote one piece recently on my
tribute to Fred Craddock.
I just read a poem by Michael Dennis Brown. His last stanza
on “Consider the Lilies goes like this:
Consider the lilies;
there where
your wealth lies,
you will see
where your heart lives:
all petals, all
leaves.
Know the lives of the lilies.”
But the poem that really nudges me to open my eyes just a
little wider is that poem by Frances Cornford. She was on a train and she
looked out and saw this woman wearing gloves—just walking this path and she
wrote:
“Why do you walk through the fields with gloves—
Missing so much and so much?”
Oh why do you walk through the fields in gloves—
Missing so much and so much.”
Maybe blogging is a way I am trying to open my eyes and take
the gloves off and experience what is around me. We all miss so much. The train
just goes too fast and these days it seems to go faster and faster.
What has gotten the most hits? You won’t believe this:
Pay-Day Loans. I have had 7,361 hits. Guantanamo and John Grisham had 1624. Is
the Pope a Catholic? produced 909 responses.
Of course I have had a lot of frustrations. Some of the
pieces I thought were great nobody seemed to care about and some of the blog
pieces I wrote off in a hurry have brought many more responses. I’ll never be a
household word if you want to get back to my egomaniacal phobia. But my blog
keeps me fresh and forces me still at age 79 to use some of brainpower—what’s
left, that is. It keeps me off the
streets and makes my wife happy that I am not downstairs running her crazy and
invading her space. This blogging gives me a pulpit, which I dearly miss—even
though most churches think we old timers are over the hill.
--Roger Lovete / rogerlovette. blogspot.com
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