Long Time Coming...

"Okay. It's really none of my business but it's now Sept. 14th and you have not posted a blog since July 1st. Too long! There are people needing to hear your heart, your thoughts, your insights, your stirrings, your your your. So?..."

That's the unfortunate email that was awaiting discovery in my inbox last week. The author, my dad, is right. it's once again been far too long since I've posted here. (He might be slightly delusional, though, when he wrote that people are "needing" to hear my heart, thoughts, insights, stirrings, etc. His vision is sometimes a little, um, swayed by the gene-pool connection.) It's not for loss of food for thought. I've have much on my mind over the past few months. I hope to post about some, if not all of these over the next few weeks, but, suffice it to say, my mind has been racing but so has my schedule. The plate's been fully, the demands of life, marriage, ministry, and teaching consuming. I wouldn't change much of that, but it's made bringing my thoughts to life through the written word an insurmountable challenge to this point.

Today, again, I've got much on my mind, but I'll leave this post with a few random hints at some of the thoughts that have been trapped in the black hole of my mind of late:

• the crisis of faith that comes when we actually read the way God is described in Scripture,
  
• the life of a parent,
  
• losing friendships and journeying alone,
  
• the great things that happened at Mission: Possible 2007 (our church family's local area mission, where about half of our congregation used their vacation time to tent themselves in our neighborhood (see John's prologue) and bring redemptive hope to our community through service, hard labor, sharing a cup of cold water, and trying to restoring humanity to those on the margins,
  
• socio-moral disgust and the nature of redemptive, transformative love (a special reflection in light of an amazingly grace-filled house-warming party N, MJ, and I attended for a legally married lesbian couple that we know)
  

Lots of thoughts, no time to write, and that's just an initial list! I hope to be able to flesh some of these things out in the near future. Lots of hopes, we'll see what happens. In light of my fathers request on behalf of the three family members who read this thing and N's recent mention of my blog in her spiritual formation class, I should probably embrace the pressure and steal some time to write. We'll see.

Two (quick?) reflections will hopefully follow here. If they do, you've probably scanned them before hitting this one. If they aren't there..., sorry; I lied. I had great intentions though.