I keep returning to the question: why am I doing this? My first post was “Why Blog Now?” and I made a list. It was not exhaustive. Another list keeps playing in my head of all the reasons not to do this. It’s probably longer.

In Pensees 139, Blaise Pascal writes: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” I sit quietly in a room alone and write. But thanks to internet tech and social media connectivity I still get to cause problems. Maybe solve some, too?

My ancestors are Quakers. I like to imagine that this blog-urge is genetic. Early Friends/Quakers were known for writing. A lot. Not necessarily good writing, but prolific and passionate.

In high school the puppet show ministry of my little Friends church was called “The Publishing Company”. Our leader, who instilled in me a lifelong appreciation for Jim Henson and the Muppets, also introduced me to a name adopted by early Friends: “Publishers of Truth”.

Here’s a blurb from The Quaker Tapestry: “The publishing of Quaker books, pamphlets and broadsheets was largely due to the dedication and determination of ordinary women in a domestic setting. Until 1695 the Licensing Act made this an illegal activity. Nevertheless, George Fox writing from prison in 1656 encouraged Quakers to “Let all nations hear the word by sound or writing.”

As an ordinary man in a domestic setting (much better phrase than “stay-at-home dad”) I imagine my little blog posts as a far distant but still lingering echo of those early Friends. And I’m proud of my Quaker brothers and sisters who were among the earliest adopters of then-new internet technology to create a diverse, eclectic, and abundant Quaker presence on the web.

As a word nerd, I prefer ‘broadsides’ to ‘broadsheets’. My understanding is that historically they are relatively interchangeable terms. But broadsides in the context of naval warfare means sailing up alongside an enemy ship and blasting all your cannons at them. If I can be a Quaker and a pirate (remember when I quoted Jimmy Buffet a few posts back?) that would be amazing.

And oxymoronic. Pirates are bad. But that’s another Quaker thing – we subvert the dominant paradigm by adopting and repurposing its language. There’s no better example than the many Friends’ references to The Lamb’s War. Jesus is the lamb of God. He wages peace, not war. He’d rather be killed than kill.

So I’m doing my little part. It’s not much. But at least it’s not nothing.

And I honestly hope it encourages anyone who might ever read this (is there anyone?) to do your little part too. I want to say “because the world needs you” – which is true, but almost too hard to believe. Maybe it’s easier to believe that you and I need to do our little parts, not so much because the world needs what we have to give, but because we need to give what we have.

“I’ve got this thing in my heart I must give you today / It only lives when you give it away” – Bruce Cockburn

“If you have a closet full of clothes and you try to keep them all, your life will get very small. But if you have a full closet and someone sees something they like, if you give it to them, the world is a better place.” – Nina Hagen (‘The Godmother of German Punk’), as recalled by Anthony Kiedis when she gave him her favorite jacket, inspiring the Red Hot Chili Peppers song “Give It Away”

“It was such an epiphany that someone would want to give me her favorite thing. That stuck with me forever. Every time I’d be thinking ‘I have to keep,’ I’d remember ‘No, you gotta give away instead.’ When I started going regularly to [drug and alcohol] meetings, one of the principles I had learned was that the way to maintain your own sobriety is to give it to another suffering alcoholic. Every time you empty your vessel of that energy, fresh new energy comes flooding in.” – Anthony Kiedis

“Now, according to the natural order instituted by divine providence, material goods are provided for the satisfaction of human needs. Therefore the division and appropriation of property, which proceeds from human law, must not hinder the satisfaction of man’s necessity from such goods. Equally, whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance. So Ambrosius says, and it is also to be found in the Decretum Gratiani: “The bread which you withhold belongs to the hungry; the clothing you shut away, to the naked; and the money you bury in the earth is the redemption and freedom of the penniless.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Question 66, Article 7, [in Aquinas, Selected Political Writings, ed. A. P. d’Entrèves, trans. J. G. Dawson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948), p. 171.]