Entering the 21st Century

I confess I don't know a damn thing about blogging ... but it has dawned on me that maybe I had better learn! After all, blogs are shaping the world in ways our parents never dreamed and more and more people are turning to them instead of the MSM and other traditional institutions [like churches] for information, conversation and community.

I'm not particularly interested in being either a cyber-exhibitionist or cyber-voyeur, but I am interested in changing my world and making a difference. So, today, I have ventured into a new technology that I suspect has the potential to do exactly that.

As I engage in this action, I am thinking of one of my ancestors 13 generations back who was a Quaker dissenter and a "pamphleteer", perhaps a kind of 17th century Colonial American version of blogging. He produced several pamphlets questioning William Penn's leadership of the Pennsylvania Colony --which BTW did eventually lead to his removal from the local Quaker meeting. I consider myself, hopefully, to be following in his footsteps --we'll see!

I also, frankly, need the discipline of writing/thinking stuff that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sermon and Bible study preparation, although if you are one of my parishioners, I will not promise you that you won't hear this Sunday what you read on my blog last Tuesday. I need to take time for my own spiritual nourishment and prayer, my own Sabbath time, so I am looking to the greater cyber community to help me with that.

Finally for today ... why, BTW, do I refer to myself as The Quixotic Pastor and sign off as Reverend Dona Quixote? "Dona" is the female version of "Don" and Don Quixote is the famous man of LaMancha who tilted at windmills and dreamed seemingly impossible dreams. Depending on who you ask, Quixote is either a fool or a hero --which seems to me to be a pretty apt description of most of us engaged in any kind of prophetic or pastoral ministry these days. But more about that later ...