Blog Pre-Launch

It's presumptuous to name this a pre-launch--as if something publicly significant were taking off. I don't imagine the readership of this blog extending beyond the borders of some close friends, and even they may find the time-consuming nature of the posts too tedious to fastidiously follow. On a personal level however, I hope this will be significant. I have wanted to chronicle some of the media I've read that has--in extraordinary ways--pointed me back to the gospel and back to Jesus. Most often for me, it is an MP3 sermon that I listen to on the way to or from work. I burn through a lot of MP3 audio on my commute. And occasionally, something I listen to will hit me in an extraordinary way that I want to remember. Likewise, a phrase, or a sentence, or a paragraph from a book or article will also hit me in a way that I want to remember. At other times, it may be a moving video that joggs my sleepy affections and I'll want to somehow remember that notion--however abstract it may be.

But my flesh fails me and my memory right along with it. I don't remember things well.

Part of this is due, I am convinced, to the fact that I rely too much on my computer for organizing my life (I missed a lunch appointment with a really good friend today because I was not at work--where my calendar and re-MINDers are). And I suppose that if I want to gain that part of my mind back I should go the way of the neo-Luddites rather than more deeply intertwine my mind with e-things.

But (sorry Neil) because a small handful of friends have also found some of these media snippets helpful toward good and eternal ends, and because I am not optimistic about any ensuing conversion to the Luddite camp to exercise my memory's synapses, I proceed with my logging. I say "logging" because purists will tell you that a 'blog is really a "web-log"--that is, a log of where you have been on the web. While I get most of my MP3 sermons or seminars from the web, my books are usually simply purchased in that most antiquated form with pages, ink, and the like. I intend to include them both. The purist will also tell you (see point #2) that "if you have more original posts than links, you probably need to learn some humility." Which serves as the perfect segue to my first official post...