KISS & the Giant Sequoya on the Blogger's Path

Between my last post (November 2010) and today, a lot has happened.

Oh, wait, hold on ... man, after this past week in Pakistan and elsewhere, does that sound stupid or what?!

OK, trying again:

Between my last post (November etc.) and today, a lot has happened to me, personally.

None of it was particularly the stuff of a blog ... it was mostly stuff that kept me from blogging ... family stuff, busy stuff, unexpected travel stuff, and etc. stuff ... although I tried to write and post here several times anyway.

But nothing would spark, catch, ignite.

And since I am not one to suffer from almost any kind of writer's block otherwise ... as the annoying length of my last posts prove ... (well, they annoyed me) ... I knew something was awry ... something a little harder for me to figure out than just the fact of being busy.

During these months, I learned two things.

FIRST: I learned the story of my journey to Orthodoxy just wasn't -- still isn't, won't be for a long time yet -- ready to write. It's too close, still right at my heels, yipping, snapping sometimes. It is light years from assimilation. It has to "crock pot slow-cook" a lot lot longer.

Or, to change the metaphor: it's like you're out for a run, and you turn a corner and find a Giant Sequoya Tree fallen across the blogging path. There just ain't no way it's gonna budge, and ain't no way you're gonna get around it either.

SECOND: I learned, or remembered, rather, an old lesson from my journalism school newspaper days: KISS ... Keep It Simple, Stupid.

I was burning my mental and emotional jets down to just fumes in the fuel tanks, trying to process the depth and complexity of my journey, along with everything I had learned already about Orthodoxy thus far ... and at the same time integrate all of it into the humongous paradox that in some ways this is all really very simple.

Were I a betting man (I'm not), I'd pop over to the closest Off-Track Betting kiosk and bet the farm I'll never ever be wise enough to put all of that paradoxically simple complexity together. Not, at least, for a herd of moons yet to come. And I would bet the farm on that.

So, KISS.

Or maybe at least: Keep It Shorter ... Steve.

And some nuances, some variations:

Keep It Sundry (uh, keep it varied, diverse) Steve.

And: Keep It Searching (um, alive, "in the now," "mindful," not focused on what has been) Steve.

And: Keep It Snouted (er, hooked by stuff right under my [or our] noses, our snouts) Steve.

As this: Keep It Scriptural (*cough cough* a former Protestant, that's what I know best; still just beginning to learn Orthodox Tradition) Steve.

As well as: Keep It Sorta Snappier. (Well, this stuff still isn't simple [to me]; it takes time, crock-pot slow-cooking in my noggin. And then there's the inconvenient truth that I still do love to write!) So, if not quite real real snappier, then at least more focused.

Deal?

Okelee dokekee then!

EARLIER TOPICS FROM AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

"JOURNEY TO ORTHODOXY"

[will still write on any of these if asked]

[1] Role of Ben Hur in Spiritual Formation

[2] John the Shaman, Buddhist and (Finally) Baptist

[3] Spiritual Intuition

[4] Mysticism

[5] Salvation

[6] Prayer of the Heart

[7] Iconography, Liturgical Poetry,Art and Spiritual Life

[8] The Theotokos

[9] Saints

[10] Tradition

[11] The Bible.