I’ve always wanted to write a book and have about 20 titles and a few pages written on each. It’s come to my attention that I more think in shorter subjects or topics than one big 300 page book.
I love writing but it seems I’m not really that kind of author. So I’ve decided for my own benefit to write a blog. Mostly to help me reflect on my own journey and continue to work out my faith and how I might proceed in the future.
It’s possible some folks might find the reflections useful in their own life and if that’s the case then I’ll be quiet chuffed! That said Redeeming Dave is mostly about my own challenges, questions and things that bother me.
I chose Redeeming Dave because I think refection and progress is at the heart of Redemption. I wrote he first post called “On Redemption” to give a bit of a framework for how I understand redemption works, in basic terms I think it’s as much a process of learning who I am as it is a religious idea.
The photo above is an over lay of two pictures. One of my partner and one of me. I’m using this because she has been the most significant and constant participant in Redeeming Dave. Also it looks cool.
A few Small Warnings
The first warning. Sometimes I’ll say why I believe and will give the reasons I believe it. Very little of what I believe is absolute not because truth isn’t absolute but because my grasp of truth is so fragile and as such it develops over time with experience, reading, conversations and what I’d probably call epiphany. That happens for me when I’ve been thinking about a lot of seemingly unrelated things and suddenly they all come together in a whole. This is often referred as a Gestalt. Some guy called Max Wertheimer first came up with the theory of Gestalt Therapy and is basically means you have an “Aha” moment, a kind of sudden connection between a bunch of different thoughts.
The second warning is that I’m not interested in arguing with anyone. If you disagree with what I’m saying that’s awesome and I really encourage you to hold on to your own thoughts. I’m well past arguments where the people arguing have no intention of change. I have always been a progressive thinker and while my progress has gone through many phases with a multitude of changes I believe it’s my general approach to continue moving forward as best as I can. Not all progress works out well a bit like using coal as our main power generating source. A lot of good has come out of it but if we don’t progress to renewable energy we’ll be responsible for killing our planet. It doesn’t mean we necessarily did the wrong thing in by using fossil fuels but it will be catastrophic if we continue to resist the progress towards a sustainable way of generation power. Therefore I believe we need to be on a continual path of progress, moving forward, learning from the weaknesses with the ‘how we do things’ and believe and keep our eye on the horizon for what might be next.
The third warning. I cannot escape the fact that I am a Christian person. my faith is intwined with most of my thinking and approach to life and will be a regular attender throughout this blog. I am not to however into religion, I don’t currently go to church and find the use of a lot of religious terminology to be a little nauseating. I do feel for religious people who are unaware that their ‘Praise the Lord’ language alienates others and often makes them sound, to be honest a bit weird. The pinnacle of this happened when I was in a meeting with a bunch of social workers who were together for the first time. One of those in the meeting was a guy working as a school Chaplin in a nearby primary School. The subject at hand was something about how the different organisations might work together for the common good of the community. As the meeting wound up and we were all about to leave, the Chaplin stood up and launched into a prayer, out loud and pacing around the room. Everyone else looked at each other not with alarm but with pity. Without knowing it, right in that moment this guy had undermined trust and at least for me had convinced me that he wasn’t going to be an effective partner and certainly couldn’t be trusted to uphold our values. The most shocking thing was I was later to learn that he felt he was being a ‘witness’ to any ‘unsaved’ people in the room. If this is your kind of Christianity you will find my writings very difficult to enjoy reading and may lead you to feel the need to ‘witness’ to me. While I’m grateful that you care you won’t enjoy my response. Of course you can disagree or ask questions, I’m all for that just not the kind of toxic stuff we’ve all seen. (and I’ve participated in on social media.)
So I’m going to allow comments on each post. You can remain anonymous but it’ll need an email address which I will never make public. This should mean you’ll get a notification when other comments are made, allow you to make further comments and also allow me to moderate comments before they appear. I hope this doesn’t sound to grumpy, I’m really only trying to avoid the modern temptation (I have as well) to set people straight.