Is It Fall Yet?
Posted in General on Sep 4th, 2007 1 Comment »
I’m eagerly anticipating the first whiff of autumn in the air. This summer has been long, hot, and taxing.
Back around Memorial Day, things were quite different. Since then, I’ve been promoted to a manager’s job, church has been a whirlwind of change, and huge chunks of my world remain unsettled as a result. In addition, there has been the general messiness and frailty of life in our fallen world… in the month of August alone I had to replace my Civic’s transmission, our stove, our landline phone (twice), and my Ryobi trimmer/edger.
I like stuff to “just work,” but it feels like nothing in my life has been “just working.”
Hopefully I’m not being naïvely optimistic when I say that the prospect of fall seems to offer a welcome dose of stability. As Thomas Wolfe said, “All things on earth point home in old October: sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.” It’s not October yet, but bring it on…
One measure of the familiar is returning this week; namely, we’ll be restarting our second hour at church on Sunday. I’ll be returning to the teaching rotation along with Eric to teach Wayne Grudem’s Christian Beliefs — though I must add a quite-serious “Lord willing,” because teaching space is contingent on various facilities issues getting worked out. (Those facilities issues are one of the things that made the summer feel really long to me, and I’m at a long arm’s length from any sort of responsibility for that stuff. God bless the guys who keep the roof over our heads and the lights on!) In any event, I look forward to working with Eric again; I’m grateful for his friendship and his partnership in advancing the life of the Christian mind at Grace Fellowship and beyond.
Elsewhere, as Señor Bulldawgy has noted, there’s been precious little activity this summer from my blogging friends — my “band of bloggers,” you might say; it’s a few of us on the music team from church he’s talking about: John (keys), Kevin (guitars), and David (percussion) are among the five-star chefs of Grace Fellowship’s musical kitchen. Meanwhile, I’m the home-ec student in the corner playing bass. I love playing with those guys, even though I can’t smile and play at the same time.
But I digress… there has indeed been little in the blogosphere to enjoy. For my part, I posted exactly one entry in August, and it wasn’t much of one at that. I’ve begun to just not care that my Google Reader account has 100+ (and that’s a big “+”) unread items. Not long ago, a series of blog posts I read made me wonder whether technology is our servant or our master. I suppose the blog slowdown among my friends is a hopeful sign on that score.
Hopefully, the autumn will bring my circle of friends an abundance of time to think and write. In that hope, I offer two measures of authorial advice that Justin Taylor recounted last year.
I’ll add one more of my own. I did something this weekend that I encourage you bloggers to do: browse your own blog archives. See how your passions and interests may have changed. See if you are struck by any posts that make you think “boy, that was lame” or “I want to write more like that.” It was a profitable exercise for me, I think, but time will tell…
So bring on the fall — lowercase “f” — and see you on the blogs!
