In a couple of days, this blog will be a year old. Happy birthday, blog. I think one of the things it reflects most strongly is the ministry-formation struggle of learning where the personal properly intersects the public. It's not where you think it is, and it's not where people tell you it is, it's in that fuzzy, moveable in-between place...because in ministry, if you do it well, you're part of people's everyday lives, the grocery-shopping, life-loving, death-grieving part, not mostly the organized bits, but the pieces that people don't notice--the in-between bits. Sure Sunday morning (or whenever) is important, but it's the fact that you lift up the ordinary parts of lives that makes you a minister, really. We are here to honour the holy and urge people to greater awareness of their moment-to-moment living...even as we often neglect or even gently hide our own lives to do this work more effectively. Paradox? Yes. Important? I say vital, because Annie Dillard is right--the way we spend our days is, after all, the way we spend our lives.
So the question comes, how do we model the preciousness of daily living without making public our every move? And the answer is, we can't...
thus the question of occluded, implied authenticity. And so it is here, too, every time, just like life and church and lunch-out and grocery stores, just like doctor's offices and walking down the street. I am both/and, public and private. It is good learning; may we move ever closer to balance.
