It's been awhile...

I posted this on my Substack page today. I hadn't written anything there in a long while. I still go back and forth whether I like that format or this one better. Anyway, if you would like to subscribe to my substack, just click the link to my post from today (https://open.substack.com/pub/danhorwedel/p/its-been-awhile?r=1n32p6&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web) and then click "subscribe." It's free, though I'm still not sure you'll get your money's worth...

Anyway, here is today's post: 

Life has a funny way of changing us sometimes, doesn’t it? I tend to think of that as a bad thing… but is it? Imagine if we never changed…

I don’t really know why I stopped writing. One might think it was because I had nothing to say. It may be just as likely I had too much. I suppose a lot of problems have been caused by people saying things they weren’t really sure how to put into words. I’m never sure if it’s better to say them poorly, or not at all.

I finished reading the Penguin Classics book ‘The Desert Fathers,’ which was translated by Benedicta Ward. It was not an easy read - which doesn’t mean it was bad or good. I suppose it was good to read during a period of darkness. I know it was good to read while lying flat on my back for a week recuperating from a bout of stupidly lifting too much weight. I wish I could say it helped me deal with not being able to run for almost a month now. Still… I’m glad I read it, and glad it’s done.

I am currently reading through Poet Priest-Vol. II by Andy Squyres. Today’s reading included this (p.31-33): “The world is such that if you don’t abandon your tenderness early on, you will be crushed, and sometimes dramatically so. You will be crushed many times over as long as you let tenderness be active in your heart… But Christ promised that in learning from him - from Christ - we will ‘find rest for our souls,’ and I think that we who have been taught by the hostility of the world must dare to hold ourselves open again to the tender workings of Christ.” I’m trying to do that. But… damn… it fucking hurts to be crushed over and over. And I don’t say that as an innocent victim. Merely a human being stumbling through life the only way I know how.

Next up to read is Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow, by Jay Stringer. I’m not really looking forward to it - mostly because it has a lot of pages but also because of the content - but I’m also looking forward to it.

I have a lot of unread and unanswered emails. I never used to be like that. I don’t know what’s happened to me. Anyway, I was supposed to send a link to my latest “sermon” (or, the last time I spoke in church) to a couple people. I think this link still works: 5.3.26 sermon. Sorry about that.

I’m currently working on a message about Habakkuk, which is due to be delivered in a few weeks (I think). I’ve been living with him in my head for too long… though, probably, rightly so. I feel like we’re kindreds. And I can’t seem to find the right words to describe him (or me).

Such is life, eh?