A ‘first post’ serves many functions. This one is so that there will be some content while I play with the site layout and design. That will be a work in progress. More importantly, I figure a ‘first post’ in a blog should try to answer why it’s there. Here’s my answer.
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise chronicles of a sojourner who is increasingly disillusioned with church and with the status quo. I am a bookworm, or I was. With over 1,500 volumes in my personal library, I don’t read as insatiably these days as I once did. Part of this is that it has taken me longer than some to embrace something I knew to be true, something which an influential college professor once told us back in my college days: “The best theology is not found in books, it’s in boots.” Somewhat ironically, he was a bookworm too, and I even have several volumes contributed by him in my personal collection. Books or boots. My orthodoxy has always been better than my orthopraxy… and I don’t claim that my orthodoxy is without serious flaws. But I did purchase a new pair of boots recently.
Near the end of the movie Shadowlands, one of C.S. Lewis’ students tells him something his father says: “We read to know we are not alone.” While reflecting on this at the time, I decided it was true – and I was reading a lot at that time. I appended something of my own to the statement: “We write to know who we are.”
Who am I? I guess I don’t completely know yet. The more I write, the more I’ll be able to answer the question. On a simple factual superficial level I could answer the question, but I’m not going to just yet. I could be your best friend, I could be a leader in your church or the person you sat behind last Sunday. I could be your home group leader or your pastor. I could be anybody. One day some links will appear on this page which tell who I am and what I’m all about, but for now, the names are being witheld to protect the innocent and show grace toward the guilty. I don’t know if any more than three people will ever read this, but it doesn’t matter. If you know me, you will see clues throughout, and it will all make sense to you. If you don’t know me, you will if you keep reading. Likewise if you only thought you knew me. For now, whether you know who I am or not, you may call me Brother Maynard.
dear brother maynard,
i recently came across the quotation, “we read to know we are not alone” at the ReadFlorida website. i told my wife that i didn’t remember him ever writing such, even in his letters to malcom (and many other correspondences he maintained.) after googling it, i finally found a site which accurately conveys that this line is from the screenwriter, and not lewis, as i suspected. frankly, it’s a sentiment of which he would have disapproved, (see the abolition of men, specifically the chapter “men without chests”.) moreover, the statement is almost absurdly ironic, since we are almost always alone when we read or write. wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that we read because we are alone?