Dry weather in blogland
As I write this, I am looking out at an ugly patch of baked scrub which I once called my lawn. Here and there are tiny hints of the green which once was there, but the rest is testament to a change in the weather.
At the click of a button I can switch to another view, from which I can survey the landscape of this blog over the past few months. Here, too, I see some evidence of a drier season:
The red line indicates the start of my three month sabbatical, which now has just under two weeks to run. Clearly, like my lawn – growth has been sparse and green shoots are in short supply! A number of things strike me here:
- A blog on communication and preaching written by a practitioner is most interesting when he is …practicing.
- Pilgrimage, which has been my theme for this season, is more often a journey of inner reflection than outer communication.
- Public communicators are unduly dependent on knowing that people find them fascinating – and sometimes blog statistics feed that addiction!
- To see the chart above and be untroubled by it is evidence of the space and perspective which this time has given me, and I am so grateful for it.
Two of my companions on this ‘journey’ have been Rebecca Solnit with her book Wanderlust: a history of walking, and R.S Thomas with his collection of poetry Counterpoint. Solnit describes pilgrimage as ‘the quest in search of something, if only one’s own transformation’. Thomas, on the other hand, describes what that something might be:
I think that maybe
I will be a little surer
Of being a little nearer
That’s all. Eternity
Is in the understanding
That that little is more than enough.
In such a spirit I look out over both landscapes – real and virtual, today.