First Post

Grace and peace to you all,

Recently Fr. Scott and I attended a progran for the Phoenix Episcopal clergy the subject of which was "Blogs" and how they can further our ministries.

In order to get a little experience with setting up a blog, and at the same time to provide members of Scottie's and my families with daily updates on Scottie's condition during her recent hospitalization, I started a blog. Having gained that experience, now I would like to set up one for a different audience: members of the parish, other clergy and friends. I plan to also provide updates on how Scottie is doing, and share some of my thoughts on a whole range of topics. These topics will of course include what is happening in the parish and the diocese and the larger church, as well as some thoughts prompted by some of the things I am reading from time to time, and whatever else may come to my mind.

In my earliest days of practicing law I wrote a brief for one of my mentors that was an absolute disaster. It is an understatement to say he was not impressed with it. Actually he canned the entire brief. He told me the writing was not sharp, and neither was the analysis of the issues. He told me "fuzzy writing is the result of fuzzy thinking." He was so right. What I had written was not clear because the thoughts in my own head weren't clear either. Ever since then I have learned that taking time to write out my thoughts forces me to think more clearly. So I am doing this blog, not to impress anyone with what I have to say, but rather to force myself to write more often and indoing so force myself to think more clearly.

Why would anyone want to read this stuff anyway, I really don't have an answer for that. But I suppose I can say this. I confess only to being a person who tries to do God's will. The hardest part of that is knowing what His will is. In this blog I will share with anyone who wishes to read it, the process I go through in trying to discover His will. Perhaps by sharing that process others may be encouraged in their efforts to know His will also, and perhaps they might share that with me. In this way we can have a little community of disciples of Jesus sharing life's journey. And the great thing is we don't have to go to any meetings to do it. Can I have and "AMEN" on that? I thought so!!

As a closing thought--it occurs to me that we English-speaking people say "good bye" when we leave someone and our Spanish-speaking neighbors say "Adios". "Good bye" is short for "God bye you" which means "God be with you". "Adios" contains two Spanish words, "dios", which means "God" and "a", which means "to", as in "to God". Adios can be taken to mean "to God", or "I give you to God". I haven't done any research on this. All this is just my supposition based on my limited knowledge of English, and my even more limited knowledge of Spanish.

Nevertheless as I conclude this first post to this blog I bid you all "Adios"; I give you to God. AMEN and AMEN.