More Blogging at 'Unity Men'

I'm working with Justin on the Unity Men's Retreat, on February 22 - 23, and decided to start another blog, Unity Men (unitymen.blogspot.com), to more effectively provide information on this event and other men's programming. Since the Unity website will likely be in transition and redesign during the time up to the retreat, we wanted more access and control of the information we put on the web. It's another experiment.

In a discussion with the Elders group yesterday, we touched on blogging. We were talking about journaling, and I mentioned that I blog. While none of this group blog, they were all very aware of the dangers of putting information out into cyberspace that one would later regret. I'm glad they have that awareness; I know that elders are often targeted for fraud, and much of that these days is computer related. Yet I hope some of the elders may find these tools useful as a way to stay connected with their families and perhaps leave a somewhat more accessible and permanent written legacy than cards and letters might represent.

Photo from an earlier Unity Church Men's retreat.

Turning Comments On

A friend noted that she found my blog, and wanted to leave a comment for me, but I had comments turned off. I'm going to turn them on. But based on a cautionary note on the Blogger Help Group, I am turning comment 'word verification' (Blogger's captcha system, see illustration). Let the battle against comment spam begin!

You're a Genius If You're Reading This

I thought I was writing to a more general level, but apparently I'm writing just for you, the genius crowd. This is not a categorization I covet. Other readability tests also suggest my writing is too complex. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade level is 12, and the (unfortunately named) Fog Index puts this site on a par with academic papers. Ouch.
I. Will. Start. Using. Short. Simple. Sentences. To. Raise. My. Readability.
Promise.
Thanks to Kit Ketchem for this link.

The Veil Becomes Thin

We are restarting our Elders program, which meets monthly in the daytime. From what I've learned from notes and discussions, the group has had a variety of formats over the years, from lectures and presentations to group discussions about specific topics. I understand the format this group enjoyed most was discussion about a topic close to their lives. One of the most successful topics last year was simply titled Mothers.

I've chosen a title for the October meeting, "The Veil Becomes Thin", and we will be invited to explore, in a time near All Souls Day, Halloween, and Dia De Los Muertos, our connections with ancestors and friends who have passed on. I hope, through facilitated discussion, we might go to interesting places with such a discussion. How are these people still present in you lives? What spiritual connections remain? How do they guide or affect your lives? I don't know this group, so I'm looking forward to this with an open curiosity and interest.

I read one piece of advice in an article on blogging: keep it short. They recommend under two paragraphs. So that's what I did today, then broke that rule by adding this paragraph! Which is what we're sometimes meant to do with rules.

Ceili from my Mobile

This is a little experiment to see what happens if I try to post from my mobile phone. Pushing the limit, I'm also attaching a picture of Ceili, my dog, being her usual cute self, which was also taken on this mobile phone.
I'm going to note that I have to do a little icky HTML editing to float the picture to the right, as it is here, and as yesterday's post is set up. Not ideal, as it would be really nice if the picture and the text from an email just dropped into their proper places. But I'm revealing my inner geekiness to just be thinking about that minor form of perfection in this world.

Why Blog?

Why indeed? Part of the rationale is that this is my internship year with Unity Church, and I hope to capture some of my experiences here, and share them with others, friends at school, people considering ministry, folks at Unity that might care to know more about me.
A deeper reason is that this blogging is new and a bit scary stuff for me. I also tend to be a private person, quiet, and so this seems like work to me, not verbal release as it might be for some others. I'm a pretty sporadic journal writer, and those journal entries are just to myself. I hope I can find a better sense of my public and private voices in writing this, and hold true to the sense that this ought to be of use to people, not just the ramblings of some overcharged ego running amuck.

Getting Started

I did some quick web research, and decided that, for now, Blogger would be a good choice for this project. I began to set up the blog, and found that the username 'malspaugh' was already taken. That seemed kind of unusual, so I typed in malspaugh.blogger.com, and up popped some very old pictures from my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program near Florissant, Colorado. While my clinical training was in a hospital, the supervisory sessions often involved working with horses, as the pictures show. I had completely forgotten about these experiments at posting, and it was both a pleasant surprise, like finding an old picture in a book. It is also a somber reminder that anything put on the web has an unusual permanence, like finding an old picture of you and some long-gone ex-partner in a book - one you just checked out of the library!