Friendship and Blogging

"one can imagine the theoretical possibility of being asked to give one's life for another's destiny, and we can hope and pray that if we are ever given this test, we will pass it. But in fact, what we're often asked to sacrifice is our point of view, our opinions. My point of view is not something that I can easily relinquish. I work very hard, throw all my intelligence and passion into its development. When I meet someone who seems confused, lost, or simply wrong, it has always been an effort that springs from a deep affection for that person when I share my point of view with him. But it is precisely this point of view, no matter how correct, that my friend doesn't need -- that could, in fact, be a negative distraction for him. I never understood this before. Partly why I haven't understood it is that I am always hungry to hear others' points of view. But that's me. Most people do not share my hunger. I am trying to satisfy their hunger with the food I myself crave. They need something else, and they will ask for what they need. 

When I say, "They need something else," I don't mean that they need something other than Christ! I mean that they need something else besides what it is that helps me to see his face. They need whatever it is that they need so that they can see him." 

~ Come and See: Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating...

Dear friends and readers: I love the many layered unity of the Church: local and international, the missionary charisms and the pastoral, East and West, Orthodox and Protestant and Catholic. Ancient, medieval, baroque, American, global. Yes I'm Catholic, and I have a point of view, ideas, and a rhetorical knack, but I don't think I'm simplistically ideological. Over the years, I have been fiercely and idiosyncratically polemic (I thank God for mellowing me in this and yet I realize that this work of patience and empathy may be longer than my life). The internet is often a place of intense and abstract debate among strangers. That is regrettable. For my part, I burned out on all of the usual reformation/ counter-reformation polemics — they're sterile and lifeless: at best, they're like replaying the chess games of the Grandmasters (or like the 1983 movie Wargames). 

Do you love Jesus Christ? Do you love the Church? Do you love the people that the Father has gathered in the Holy Spirit, the body that is wounded from within? Then stay awhile, tell me why I'm wrong, why you find my claims to be bullshit. Ask new questions, questions determined by your needs and your point of view. Tell me things that I haven't noticed. David founded this blog to be a place of friendship online, a place where the widest points of view and diverse human experiences could come together — reflecting his own restless journey. In the past this blog has had many contributors, and I welcome new contributors who have a strong point of view and a strong desire for friendship. And previous contributors are invited to rejoin the conversation.

There's risk in all true dialogue, a risk that makes life a drama, an adventure. What do you desire? What do you need? What can you teach me?