Sunday Night Journal Archive: December 2003

December 18, 2003

Welcome

Partly because I have wanted to do it for some time, and partly because my job has finally required me to learn web technology, I have been experimenting with this site for a couple of weeks. As an exercise, I posted an old book review, of Who Owns America?, for a friend to read. Yesterday a mention on Touchstone’s blog, Mere Comments, of a book on a similar theme—Catholic agrarianism—prompted me to send a link to the review to the Touchstone editors. Mr. David Mills responded, very kindly, by posting the link.

So here I was, feeling like a housewife with unexpected guests, the proprietor of a web site comprised of a minimal framework and exactly one item for reading. I have gathered a few more things, in case a visitor wishes to look around for a bit. And perhaps I am in the situation of Bilbo at the beginning of The Hobbit, when the dwarves began to arrive. Although I trust my guests will be far more courteous than his, this may similarly constitute an encounter which will take me along a new road.

Welcome, then. Light on Dark Water is officially live.

What does the name mean? It is taken from this poem I wrote a few years ago. I'll say more at another time of the significance of the phrase to me.

I look about for some sign of the time, some auspice which might lend a sense of intent to this accidentally-chosen opening day. There is no saint or blessed soul on the liturgical calendar; it is only a weekday of Advent. That “only” should of course make you smile: “only” a step on the road toward commemoration of the event which, as T.S. Eliot said, bisects history. Today’s Gospel is Matthew, chapter 1, verses 18-25. I will take verse 23 as my theme and touchstone: “…his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means God with us.”

Emmanuel: as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen.

This is not a blog.

The very idea of a blog makes me nervous. My life is too rushed as it is, and I know how easily I would fall into the compulsion to post frequently, and about everything on which an opinion popped into my head: events major and minor, fits of pique or spleen, brief enthusiasms. Better to let things sit at least overnight. And I have no desire to recount the events of my very ordinary daily life—nor, I assure you, would you have any desire to read about them.

This part of the site is, rather, a journal which I have in mind to post roughly once a week. My intention is to avoid saying things which are being widely said elsewhere, which is to say, to avoid wasting my time and that of any readers. This may mean that I find I have nothing much at all to say. If that proves to be the case, so be it. Some weeks ago I wondered aloud to my wife about starting a blog. In her dry and down-to-earth way (and one needs to be able to see her eyes when she says things like this) she expressed a certain surprise at, and derision toward, “people who believe the whole world needs to know what they think.” Well, I suppose I must be one of those, and I will try to keep that derision in mind as a check on my own pleasure in listening to myself speak.