The Graveyard
“Seminary is where blogs go to die.”
Someone posted that on the true blog-killer, Facebook, and I laughed. I almost wrote, right here in the space where you’re reading these words instead of what I wanted to write, “And something clicked inside me.” But that something clicks a lot and not a damn thing ever happens.
Take, for example, my Greek studies; I’m probably going to fail that class. Am I having trouble understanding what the aorist is, you ask? Or perhaps getting moods mixed up: Confusing the subperative and the injunctive? Nope. The problem is that I’m not memorizing a damn thing. That’s my problem. I know this. Something inside me keeps on clicking, and nothing changes. Click. See? Nothing. Click-click-clicklicklicklicklicklick. Not. A. Damn. Thing.
Something else needs to start clicking deep down inside me.
I might rename this old beast. I named it Decimation and Reconstruction around seven years ago. The blog was itself only a few months old, a little over a year. The webserver hosting my blog (and those of several other men in my parish) was cracked and everyone’s blog was down for about a week. At the time I thought Decimation and Reconstruction nicely summarized what happened and coincidentally served as a nice metaphor for our lives. I have left the title in place for seven years now.
I think perhaps I should rename the blog. Something like “The Abomination of Desolation,” or “Desolation and Recrimination,” or some other play on a Latinate “-tion” ending. Something that reflects that reconstruction never really happens: What is happening is always destruction. Even when we think we’re rebuilding after a massive decimation, we are either deluding ourselves or we are just building another Babel for the next act of God to destroy.
A meditation on the meaning of the season of Advent.