The Virgin Post

Ain't it grand!!!

Being able, I mean, at the age of 65, to be a virgin anything! And yet, and yet...every day I discover new things, or new ways of seeing or doing old things, or old things that turn out after all these years to be new (Emily Dickinson, say, or Dostoevsky, or this coming Sunday's Exodus reading--the ten commandments! right there you have a world of virgin material). So then, I decide to blog, as though the world needed to hear another peep out of me, and here's why: because I think two of the better ways of staying alive are to learn new things and to make new friends. I believe, too, that good argument is brain-building. (I mean real argument, though, not the ad hominem vipersnarling that passes for argument in cableworld, say, these days!) So stretch with me: it's never too soon to start (as millions of bloggers will attest).

And for me, blogging--my blogging--is going to be fundamentally play. I don't play enough, and it's time to fix that. If I'm right about reverence being my fundamental attitude to creation, then the corollary of that, for me, is that reverence needs to dance, to twirl, and to sing--reverence is play! If not, it quickly can become the road to idolatry. That's why I'm so wary of the title that precedes my ordained name, "The Reverend...." Oh shiver me, the things that go on behind that cover! But my play and my reverence are open and free and, I hope, never purposefully injurious.

That being said, already I know what a challenge this will be. I'm working off a basic Google template, and as with many of the things that limit me, this too is already getting a little frustrating. And I'm easily frustrated; and way too often in my life, frustration is followed by dereliction. So I'm hoping that in addition to brain maintenance, friendship building, and playtime, I'll get a little patience practice. Right now, I'm trying how to embed a link into this post; so far, I haven't figured it out. Feel free to help me out!

Now then, a couple of vital thanks: one to my friend and parishioner, Ms. Sally Big Woods, who blogs at http://grandforet.blogspot.com. She's been bogging way for three years now, and I go there more and more to hear her voice, see her art finds, find out about things I never knew about. She's my inspiration! (And Ms. Sally's not a quitter, which will help me out when the quitting furies swirl about me.)

Then there's a summer friend, Tinky Weisblat, who lives with her amazing 90 year old mother in the hills of northwestern Massachusetts...

The hills of Western Massachusetts, home of my heart

...where she passes time by cooking and now, by blogging about her cooking. I myself love to cook, and have found her posts evocative of all manner of things for me: memories, family, homestead, friends. It was when I realized that my comments to her posts were becoming posts themselves that I thought maybe I'd better treat them that way. To follow Tinky and her mom and her friends in the kitchen, check her out here.

And next on this list is a young guy I met when my boyfriend, Louis, and I went up to Vermont a couple of weeks ago and spent a few days up there looking for potential summer perches. We stayed at a great B&B (if you're a gay man, anyway) called Frog Meadow. Outside there was lots of crusty snow (though by the time we left there were eight new inches of powder); inside was warm, hospitable, and friendly. On the night of the snow, after we slithered up Newfane Hill through heavy snowfall and before supper, Scott and Dave (Dave's the main cook) fed all of us in the house rather than let us risk heading out for food. It's that kind of place.

The Frog Meadow kitchen

Anyway, two other guest turned out to be a guy named Dave (26) and his boyfriend (20), who had driven up from Rhode Island for a visit. Turns out that Dave runs a blog, Break the Illusion, under the cute moniker DaveyWavey, that now gets a couple of million hits a month and generated almost $6000 for him last month. Now, I'm not in this for money--never been much good at making it or keeping it--but I was impressed with what happened to Dave

DaveyWavey snagged from his page (I think that may be a no no...if so, sorry!)
who started out with just a regular blog a couple of years ago, but whose voice and take on things has earned him an audience. I was also impressed with his savvy about how to use the web for marketing purposes, which is one of the ways he makes a living. Since I'm pretty sure that the future of the church I love, or of any community, will have deep roots in webworld and be able to move around comfortably there--and make it possible for everyone in the community to move comfortably too--I thought I could learn a thing or two for my church from Dave. And I will--already have, and there's more to come.

Finally, but not least, I gotta thank my church community, St. Mary's, the Episcopal Church at Penn and our inveterate, invaluable parish admin guy, Douglas Watts. After I put up a blog for the church about a year ago, Doug started posting every now and then with some interesting stuff (he's an interesting and nigh-unto-brilliant and also very funny guy!); also, he has been unrelenting but very gentle in his encouragement of me over all these months, until at last here I am.

In some ways, too, the Philadelphia Faerie community, especially the online community and its insatiable unrelenting maven, Chris Bartlett, who Twitters and Scribds (http://www.scribd.com/harveymilk) as Harvey Milk and blogs too, though where I'm not sure. Chris has an amazing creative brain, a gentle but persevering spirit, a way with words, and a sturdy zeal for justice. Since the Faeries best describe and perhaps embody what I mean by the title of my blog, and in many ways embody what "community" can mean, I thank them for having me all these years!

I've been working away on this for a while now--from determination to enrollment to template to post has taken me the better part of three hours--and because they're going to kick me out of my (and many people's) favorite coffee and community place, InFusion, in Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, I'm gonna try to stick a few pics in here and then zoom.

Peace out.

Jim

Post script: I figured out the link thing! Now there's gotta be an easier way to do the pictures! Eek! Help!