Fishing

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. --1 Cor 13:12

I suppose that blogging is at least on some level a cry for attention. It is a will to dialogue, a will to share and to receive. It may even sometimes be a cry for help. It is certainly an avenue forged for the sake of connection--first of all with oneself, and then with others.

We go through life hardly knowing what to think of ourselves--how do I really feel, what do I really believe? Sometimes what we do becomes sufficient in itself to define. I am a computer programmer and I like bicycle racing. I am banker and I am active in various social causes. I am a husband and a father.

What about the rest? What about this scary mess of conflicting inclinations, multiple choice meanings; this struggle of opposites, this constant continental shift of who we are and who we want to be, what we think and what we know, how we feel and how we are caused to feel. Any man but touched by the feather of the unknown must fall, and begin again.

One's viewpoint, one's character, one's faith is very often no more than a passing product of the moment. The passion of thought causes us to speak of the part and not the whole. We end therefore in communicating prejudice rather than compassion, and we live and are perceived according to the incompleteness not only of what we have been able to express, but what we have failed to express, not to mention what we ourselves do not yet know.

A thousand words are expended toward describing what is otherwise clear in one beat of the heart. Language finds itself fishing for meaning and completeness like a child with a stick and a string--who moreover did not care to touch the worm.