On politics, on Christianity

The obvious question for someone starting a new blog is: why?  What do you have to contribute that is of value?  What perspective can you add to the mix of voices out there?

I think there are two poles that my blog is likely to circle. One involves politics.  We mourn the lack of dialogue between right and left, but I see very few people who trying to bridge that gap (if you’re one of them, let’s talk!).  Mostly I see people sniping at each other from their respective positions with very little effort to phrase their arguments in ways that can be heard by the other side.

I believe that finding common political ground is a valuable pursuit.  I continue to believe that dialogue is possible. I am a lifelong liberal, and in this blog I will try to weigh liberal principles against my understanding of conservative fundamentals as a way to promote/model an open conversation about both. I hope you’ll listen with an open mind and help me understand where I’m wrong.

This part of my blog is an outgrowth of an email discussion I had with my late father-in-law Bob Catale. Like many relatives nowadays, we occupied different ends of the political spectrum. Unlike many relatives, we maintained a friendship and an intellectual respect for each other, as well as a certain amount of good humor. (As Bob lay dying in his hospital bed, I told him, “In your heart, you know I’m right.” That little riff on Goldwater by a liberal made him laugh.) Bob was incredibly well versed, with graduate training in English literature, history, and criminal justice. He could run laps around me in history (in particular), and so I am grateful for his tolerance of my relative lack of knowledge (I’m a spotty 20^th century guy at best). Mostly I think Bob appreciated and enjoyed having a debate with someone who could marshal counter-evidence instead of simply letting him steamroll over their opinions.

After several late-night bull sessions, I decided to instigate an email version of our wide-ranging discussions, seeking to do exactly what I want to do in this blog: boost my understanding and find common ground. We never quite reached consensus in that discussion (which he generously participated in with two-finger typing!), but it helped me think about how such a conversation might proceed. The political portion of this blog is dedicated to the memory of my late father-in-law and his powerful, passionate intelligence.

The other likely focus of my blog is on Christianity. I don’t particularly have anything new to say about following Christ. What I do have (at least according to my wife) is an ability to talk about following Christ without using too much “churchy” language. My wife likes “the gospel according to Greg” as a way to help a relative newcomer find the way toward faith and Christian practice, and so I plan to share my perspective on following Christ in hopes that others might find it useful.  The religious portions of my blog are dedicated to my wife Vivian.

I’ll also probably drop in sundry content along the way (I’m planning a “Three Great Novels about Sex!” post), but I will circle back to those two main topics (on political common ground, on Christianity) repeatedly, so if either of those are of interest to you, I encourage you to join in. (By the way, this is probably not going to be a blog that deals much with the relationship BETWEEN politics AND Christianity, a topic I don’t have a lot to say about)

I want to highlight a couple of words I used above. One is the word “weigh.” I hope to weigh political and religious practices so that we can better see their advantages and shortcomings. I will be critical not only of other positions but also of my own home teams (liberalism, Christianity). We should all take a hard look at our own tribe, I believe, if we are to move forward. And so it is necessary to weigh or “assay,” to use an old verb, one that is at the origin of my favorite written form, the “essay.”

The essay is a time-honored form that feels a bit out of step with the current media landscape. I also feel increasingly out of synch with the timing of communication today. Unlike many people, I seem to be unable to say something interesting in a timely fashion in 120 characters. I also am increasingly aware of my own introversion. While others feel the ability to speak their minds about politics or other topics in real-time conversation, my tongue tends to seize up, unable to convey orally the complexity I see before the conversation moves on. And so I have found myself sitting on the sidelines without “putting myself out there,” and that feels both cowardly and selfish to me. The essay allows me the time to weigh what I have to say, to explore what I really believe through the process of writing. I hope you will take the time to read these meanderings (another time-honored tradition of the essay). I hope that my serpentine pursuit of a better understanding will be interesting, honest, and useful.

That’s the other word I wish to emphasize: “understanding.” Instead of proclaiming a definitive answer, essays seek to understand. They make tentative pronouncements to assay their worth. By putting my not-quite-formed opinions out into the blogosphere, I hope to improve my understanding. By doing this as a blog (which already feels like an old-fashioned media form), I hope to engage with people in pursuit of common ground.