Fear and Trembling in the Blogosphere

Sometimes I wonder when I will finally hit my technology threshold and become wholly incompetent in the art of adaptation. This is my first posting on my first blog, and I know I’m late to the party. There is a simple explanation: I am a techno-peasant, and I am old. Only fifty-two, but still: the generation gaps, which used to be counted in decades, now seem to occur every few years.I taught myself how to type on a manual typewriter in my first year of college; my kids learned to type in school, on computers, in second grade. I bought my first computer when I was thirty-one; my kids have been using them since they were tall enough to drool on the keyboard. And I didn’t really start using e-mail consistently until about the end of the last century. By now, as my daughters explain to me pityingly, e-mail is “old people’s technology”. The girls are now thirteen and fourteen years old and, with the temporary schizophrenia that characterizes the teenage years, they are capable of simultaneously wishing their parents were cool and finding it “gross” that we are on Face Book.So why would I start to blog? There are three reasons, none of which have to do with a perverse need to add one more thing into my insanely packed days.

Number one: I am really tired of the degree to which “religion” and the “religious perspective” are still so dominated by the those who are conservative in their faith and right-wing in their politics. I want to be one more voice exploring the complexity and diversity of religious faith and the ways in which it compels those of us who are progressive in our politics toward action in the world.

Number two: I am at least as tired of the degree to which many secular progressives believe not only that they themselves have no use for religion, but that religious people in general are foolish, irrelevant and vaguely embarrassing. For those folks who draw all their hope, inspiration, perseverance and courage from purely secular convictions and heroes, good for you! But I’d like to help generate a bit more respect, open-hearted curiosity toward and solidarity with those of us who draw these things from our religious faith.

And third? I think it’s a form of spiritual discipline to notice where the boundaries are for our various comfort zones and stretch ourselves out of them a little. I am most deeply in my comfort zone in the truly “old people’s technology” of the printed page; so I am pushing back against my Luddite soul in the hope that the vast network of techno-wizards out there will be tolerant of my blunders and kind in your guidance.

So… even though I really have no idea what I’m doing, off I go! Call it an act of faith…