A Few Steps Backward, Confessing and Apologizing

I feel the need to defend this enterprise before I properly start it. I know its an unattractive characteristic, the preemptive apologetic, one that reveals a degree of insecurity and, as is often the case with insecurity, pride. But my vices are what they are and in good Catholic manner I feel better confessing them, validating my confession with apologetic.

How do pride and insecurity play into the initiation of a web log?

Well, I write because I want to be read, or, in the more colloquial sense, to be heard. It is a lovely exercise of the mind, to write something daily. Our capacity to formulate our thoughts into words, articulating, condensing, editing, reviewing, and pronouncing that which begins ethereal until it becomes visible and comprehensible by another intellect, our ability to write, grows only through use. And the blog is an excellent medium on which to practice our skill, and to develop it. But, that isn't the reason why I want to start a blog. If that were reason alone, I would simply write in a journal, or compose essays outside of a public forum. Instead, I chose a medium that is more exposed, open to the wandering eyes of the world-wide-web and to those of my friends and family whom I invite. Because this way, I can be heard.

Is the desire to be heard an expression of pride? Or is it a natural human desire, a part of our quest for self-discovery and self-actualization? The desire for self-expression is a desire oriented, rather obviously, around the self, and so falls easy prey to the many snares of egoism. There is a thin line between the desire to express out-of-self and the desire to express self, singularly and willfully. When our self-expression is directed inward, when the message expressed is SELF, a perverse cycle of egotistical pride is generated and perpetuated.

I admit that there is some pride in my want to write a blog. But I acknowledge that SELF is usually not an interesting message, and so I will try to keep it to a minimum.

And as for insecurity, well, I am fully aware of the cliche quality of a blog on religion. There are many, many blogs of this sort and many will be better than mine. To that inevitability I say, paradoxically with humility, I will do the best I can and acknowledge that it is very little.

Incidentally, if you would like to learn more about blogs on religion and the nature of discourse on God on the internet, read Jonathan Last's article, God on the Internet, in the December issue of First Things. http://www.firstthings.com/