A Few Days Off

I'll be taking a few days off from blogging--I've got some deadlines to meet, and won't have enough time. I always want to clear my head a bit.

Blogging, it turns out, can distort your vision, and make you think that you're smarter than you really are, And that the who world-wide-wide needs to have your latest opinions on just about anything.

In other words, you become start thinking less like a journlist and more like a pundit--which is about the scariest thing I can imagine.

I've also found, that I'm spending too much time on the small stuff and missing the big picture. The Kerry communion clashes, the Bush church and state conflicts, the abortion questions, the issue of gays in the church, fights over worship styles, and deconstructing Left Behind is fascinating stuff. But it's also distracting.

The world's a mess out there. There's more fighting in Congo, where things have been, over the past decade, almost as bad as Sudan. And Sudan's become a hellish place. Here's how a BBC correspondent described conditions there:


It is very disturbing to be a me or a you and to see what is happening in Darfur.

To see humanity stripped to its barest bones. To see people so traumatised that they stutter from their memories, or wail at night, and now so destitute that they simply have nothing.

Not a blanket, not shelter, not water, not food, not basic health. Nothing. And the prospect of things getting worse.


The AIDS crisis, despite heroic efforts, is getting worse with 5 million more people being infected last year.

Once in a while, you find someone doing something extraordinary in response. Like this minister who quit his job to go help AIDS orphans.

Here's why:
When the parents of a 15-year-old girl pleaded with the Rev. Greg Jenks to persuade their daughter not to spend two months in Africa helping AIDS orphans, he saw it as a sign.
A sign he needed to go himself.

Next month, Jenks will begin a new life shuttling back and forth from Zimbabwe. He has preached his last sermon at Christ Community United Methodist Church in Clayton. This month he's putting things in order so he can best meet the needs of children orphaned by the AIDS pandemic.


Or you find a story that reminds you why you started writing in the first place.

Andy Crouch did that in of all things, a piece about Christian writers, where he tries to find someone to help Maxine, a 72-year old widow, tell the story of watching her aging huband die while resting her arms.

These are the kind of stories I want to blog about. So, when I get back, that's what I plan to do.

Night all.