Bierkergaard: Why I Write

I have to share an inside thought: I have thought recently about killing off this Bierkergaard Blog. I have been at it for a decade or so. I have seen many other blogs begin, launch, crash, and then die. The blog world is a junkyard. Once bright and gleaming, now rusted and decrepit.

Warning: This becomes a rant...if you are still game, hop on for the ride.

I have a larger readership than most. I am approaching 400,000 page views overall (373,543).Yet, sometimes I feel as if am blogging into the abyss. I get some feedback occasionally from my dad who is probably my most faithful reader which really flatters me. My dad is no fool and he also really doesn't subscribe to my faith perspective in the least. Besides knowing that it is important to me and that religion is useful to guide social norms. He is Nietzsche-Lite. A philosophical Nihilist who is not nasty about it. Intellectually, he thinks Christianity is not really True but has truths in it if that makes any sense.

The stories in the Bible didn't actually happen. Or, if they did, they were worked up to be supernatural in nature rather than just natural. Re-interpreted to give them a transcendental character and mythologized, a haphazard collection of tales merged together into a heavily redacted tome. He has an analytical and deductive intellect and my faith has been tested as in a acid bath and has come out stronger. We don't argue about it anymore. I am not very good at converting people. That's God's job should the Deity wish to do it. I am Reformed and Calvinistic. I am not entirely on-board with God choosing but I am certainly much less confident than humanity choosing. We are a distraught lot who can't even decide how we want to spend an open Saturday afternoon or what we want for breakfast.  Having eternal destiny in the balance it a weighty thing.

This not converting people ties into why I have thought about abandoning Bierkergaard. I have spent a lot of my days feeling like God placed me on this earth to make a difference, even a major difference. A positive one. The circumstance of my birth where I was close to not making it, having to work through the difficulties of the neurological and life issues that resulted--and my choices both good and ill--in response to them, has given me a perspective. I also have always loved words and reading and writing. On top of that, I have worked extremely hard to develop my knowledge about the things that I have found meaningful (theology, the college transition, beer, travel, and coffee). I haven't just sat around. I have put my hand to the plow and suffered for my craft. I haven't been lazy and entitled. I HAVE MY SCARS.

Yet....yet, I feel almost entirely unappreciated for my efforts. I elicit yawns from others. A glazed over look as if I am one more in the parade of writing wannabes. Rejection. Or more like apathy. I consider active rejection a good omen as it is better than nothing. Me the Canine: Kick the dog if you are not going to pet it. The worst thing is to not even be acknowledged. On second thought, don't kick me. Ignoring is OK.

Now, I know there is a good deal of pride and ego in this. Although, I have tried to be honest and reflective about it. We all want to be appreciated. But there is a line crossed into adoration that we all want. In our most honest moments, we know that this is a sick impulse, lurking in our darkened hearts, seeking to be stroked.

As an aside, some 9th graders at school on Friday told me that I am known as the best school counselor in the building. I had to laugh without belittling them (they were very dear). I felt obligated to let them know that at least some students hate me. Of that, I am pretty sure. Or strongly dislike. At the least. But these 9th graders were effusive about their affirmational testimony.

This apathy thread runs into a large tapestry of my life story of feeling unappreciated and unacknowledged. From being a teenager who needed some answers to my hard questions where the adults in my life were too preoccupied with their own existence to take their eyes off of themselves for a moment to maybe ask me what was going on, to being a young adult who had to learn the hard way life lessons, to my work in developing expertise and authority in my professional field of adolescent development and how it pertains to the college transition (a pretty big problem still), to my personal life, I don't sense I get a lot of shine.

To wit, I knew that if I didn't plan to do something on my own birthday, I was going to be likely sitting on my ass at home. I am not decrying this necessarily. I know peoples' sight of vision is themselves and those closest to them, I just know that I am not on a whole lot of people's emotional radar besides a few, and I mean a few, very close friends. My parents really stepped up to make personal contact that was genuine and appreciated (they are not together). My aunt sent me a funny beer-themed card (I only have myself to blame for that as I post pictures of beer on Facebook like people post pictures of their babies). I got some sincere wishes, and probably some perfunctory "Happy Birthdays" on Facebook, emails, and texts. I connected with a college friend of over three decades and we hung out in Leesburg on my birthday weekend. And even though we disagree vehemently about Trump's tactics (which he endorses and I despise) we are able to still maintain a friendship. That was and is cool. He reminds me that the Democrats are dirty also and I don't disagree.

RANT WARNING: My alienation is not helped by me forsaking traditional church on Sunday. It was a combination of the Trumpian support from Evangelicals, the creeping Liberalism in the Body, and Conservatism becoming bitter and brittle that has pushed me out. Frankly, when I went through my Divorce, I felt that my Presbyterian Pastor kicked me when I was down and then pissed on my head. And I paid him to do it to boot through my tithe. All of a sudden I was asking the question of why I was engaged in such an enterprise and institution. With friends like this as they say, who need enemies?

So, I have stared a Craft Church on Thursday Nights with the Bible and Beer being the theme. I look at Beer like the Bread that fed the 4,000 and 5,000. The attracting beverage for the body with an ecclesiastical edge, and good support from the Reformers like Luther and Calvin I might add, who certainly enjoyed their drink and found comfort and consolation in it, and then theology for the soul. An examination, one verse at a time, of James. One verse per month. I hope to write a devotional one day for educators with the notes and lessons that I am accruing.   

Again, it has not drawn a lot of people. The ones that come seem to appreciate it. I don't want to use the guilt laden arm-twisting move. I want those who come, want to come. God loves a cheerful giver, and that comes down to a lot more than money....time, attention, attendance, effort, etc. Yet, I press on as I think Thursday nights are a much better model for fellowship than Sunday morning. I take the Sabbath seriously and was feeling seriously spent by spending half my day in Church. I particularly came to not like endless music, particularly that cranked up to be a performance theatrical vibe and even hysterical. I also think that the big budgets for big buildings that stay empty for most of the week to be about the dumbest thing imaginable. And recycled sermons. One of the dilemmas of being well read and devoted to theology is that I need something more and maybe that is not a realistic assumption. I just get bored easy with the same tenets explained over and over again, and with misguided people opining, who should take the time to read the Scriptures for what they say before getting all weird. 

It would be OK if those in error, or at least in Christian immaturity, could take a honest evaluation of their postulations. But, often they can't. It is too easy to fall into the trap of being labeled a legalistic Pharisee if I take doctrine seriously. So, I refuse to play the bad guy role. I opt out. I didn't sign up for this. On a Sunday particularly. I would rather be coated with honey and rolled onto a Fire Ant hill.     

Profoundly unrestful and stressful.  Add to that the peculiar paradox that I am confessionally very conservative yet practically pretty culturally broad (art, dress, food, etc), I am an odd bird. Most Conservative people are sticks in the mud who live in a box and eat up Fox News as a way of animating and providing animus to their otherwise staid lives. The outrage machine exists to fill the void that their lack of doing something great leaves vacant.

Liberals have just lost the spirit. You know when your idea of innovation is another government program, you are out of ideas. That the Democrats have such a lackluster first team is a pretty sad commentary. They can't get the best of Trump, a man so unqualified in character to hold the highest office in the country, that I fear for the Republic. Trump, to his credit, had to do two things: 1) Decommission Clinton Inc., he did it by being nastier than them, 2) Call out China, for its intellectual thievery, currency manipulation, and economic and political hegemony. The way that Trump has done this promises some harsh blow-back....it is possible to do hard things without being a jerk and Trump is pretty much the King of Jerks, a bad person. Just a bad person in his own unique manner. We are all sinners, and is a good idea to remember that no one of has the throne of saintliness to rule from. Yet, some individuals seem to embrace another depraved level of dirty-tricks and Trump makes Nixon look like St. Francis of Assisi. 

Trump is peculiarly talented to get this adversaries to fight using his tactics. And when they do, he beats them to death. He is devilish. It is so hard to counter him. Hurled retaliatory insults just become recycled arrows sent back into the battle. He is the master of leverage and dirty-dealing. He is the white collar version of a street fighter, bringing his sterling silver switchblade to the fight.     
                               
RANT OVER ALERT: To end this screed, I would write even if alone and the last person in the world left to read it. Writing and then reading what I have written gives me a sense of purpose that my voice is worth listening to, even if I am the only eyes to read it and ears to hear it. If you do like this blog, feel free to let me know. It would be an encouragement.