After a long season of inactive blogging, I have relaunched my blog under a new name, with a different style, and most importantly a new emphasis. In my previous blog, “The Coyote Howls”, I was intending to focus on stories and storytelling, but I soon found myself everywhere, addressing many things and in many ways. Through this all, however, I realized that I was consistently theological in how I related to and processed the world around me. Actually, realizing this was not much of a surprise as a large part of my reading diet, for the past twenty years, has been in the field of theology. In fact, in looking back, I think the emphasis of “The Coyote Howls” was an attempt on my part to break out of my normal frame of reference, and thereby not allow my theological studies to determine my horizons. Also, at the time that I started blogging I had just enrolled in a program to pursue an MA in English Literature, and thus one of my motives was to establish myself in this new discipline. As time went on, however, though I remained genuinely interested in stories and literature, I found that I was not quite connecting with the Coyote persona through which I was expressing myself.

The rebirth of my blog I hope represents a more holistic integration of who I am and how I express myself in writing. I am deeply theological. This is a reality that I have often felt akward about, but I realize that it would be inauthentic of me to deny this for the sake of acceptance. In the vain of integration, however, I also must acknowledge that the Coyote is a part of me, and thus story and fiction will factor into the kinds of writing that I will be doing in this blog. In many ways this new blog will be similar to my old blog, particularly in the spectrum of cultural issues I will address, but the distinction will come in my intentionally processing such issues from a theological standpoint.

Though I will have more to say about the significance of the title of this blog for my writing here, let me briefly share the following.

The title “The Dark Glass” is inspired by the Apostle Paul’s words in 1st Corinthians 13.12, where he states “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” For me, this has alot to say about the nature of understanding (epistemology) in this world. The first thing this passage highlights is that understanding is unclear and partial, and the second thing is that true understanding is interpersonal. In brief, an implication of this passage for those of us who seek wisdom, understanding, and truth, is that we must be humble regarding the assertions we make about the world we live in, since in the end our vision is limited. Another implication, that arises particularly from Paul’s statement about being known, is that understanding can only really happen in the context of relationship, particularly the kind of relationship that is characterized by love. It is the implications of this passage that I will try to keep in mind when I write in this blog, and it is for this reason that I call this place “The Dark Glass”.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 22nd, 2006 at 3:04 am and is filed under Everything Else, Human Knowing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.