Welcome!

new year's insight
or perennial delusion -
wisdom and happiness through blogging

Slog through another blog? I was just planning to cut back on my feeds, find some more entertaining reads, and save my brain from PC-induced drain.

We live in a word-dependent culture, don't we? Spend a few minutes in a staff meeting, a family Thanksgiving gathering, or a Protestant worship service -- words piled upon words. Good words, many of them: welcome, congratulations, shared sorrow, gentle guidance and firm hope.

Too often, however, we are not only word-dependent, but imagination-starved. The words are flat, the ideas are predictable, and the conversations fail to inspire or challenge us. One reason for these outcomes is the collective disengagement of our imaginations.

The imagination reveals meaning and mystery to us in ways that rational thought cannot. We learn different ways of seeing, listening, and speaking. We allow ourselves to think new thoughts, and most importantly, to think no thoughts.

So, another blog with more words; but I envision a distinctive purpose and method. The Pine Tree Notebook is my attempt to connect the dots among three centers of focus: the practices of our faith; the precise, random beauty of nature; and the ability of our baptized imaginations to open our personal worlds - including faith, nature, and our inner selves - to new experience and expression.

Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light. Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods