pat loughery

A month or two ago I realized that this blog was down.  I did a bit of investigation but didn’t find the root cause, and frankly didn’t spend much energy on it because I didn’t really know if I wanted to invest the time to recovering the past.  Pretty much every time I think I have the motivation to write consistently here, I lose that motivation within days or weeks, and who wants a blog full of “hey, I’m recommitting here!” posts, one after another.

A few things have occurred that shifted that attitude for me.

One was that I’ve finally gotten some focus and have new ideas to write about.  That has largely come from teaching a pair of courses at a seminary that I greatly admire – The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology.  I’ll fill in some details along the way, but probably you’ll see them out of order.  I’m teaching their SFD601, a spiritual formation course in prayer; and SFD526, a spiritual formation course in Celtic spirituality.  For now, trust me when I say that the experience has been invigorating.

Another is that a few of my blogosphere friends have gone through a similar process of dormancy and now finding a voice – more focused and with a shift in direction for all.  That’s encouraging.  See blog posts by Jen Lemen, Alan Creech and Kevin Rains for some of these examples.  Others have continued, never having needed to leave and return.

Another is that I know I need to practice writing.  Things are bubbling that will one day find their way out, though it’s not yet time.  For now, I’m collecting topics and stashing away info for some of them, to see what comes alive first.

And a striking one is that God spoke to me in a unique way.  As I was pursuing the technical problem (which was that I’d deleted the wrong WordPress database, but had an older, corrupted copy), I had also finally gotten around to watching The Walking Dead.  That happened because I spent three straight weekends in bed with cascading waves of migraine, and I couldn’t think clearly enough to read but could catch up on TV.  So I was on an episode late season two when one of the characters was dealing with hell and attempted suicide, and then facing the question of whether she wanted to truly live or not.  In that character’s struggle, I felt encouragement to not let this blog die, but to resurrect it (yet again).  And the solution turned out to be easier than I’d imagined it would be.  So yeah, the voice of the Spirit through zombie existentialism gave me a nice nudge.

So, no promises.  I’m not going to write daily; perhaps weekly or less often.  I do want to get back to providing some thinking and resources to folks who stumble this way.  In the short term, I’ll  be providing some of the content and discussion points for our course on Prayer, once I can figure out who owns what rights to which thing.

Godspeed.