Καθολικός διάκονος: looking ahead by looking back

I was looking back over my recent posts this morning and started to chuckle at myself because they are so heavy, which is not a bad thing, especially in the blogosphere, which, by its nature, consists largely of undigested information and links to links. Since I blog wholly as a sideline and do not in any way rely on it for income or anything else, I am quite free to post on what I will, when I will it. Despite this, I try not to make blogging exclusively a matter of my will.

I am sure that I do not personally know everyone who frequents these webpages, but I am blessed to know many who do. I love the fact that I spend more time discussing what I post in person and even on Facebook with readers than in the comboxes here at Καθολικός διάκονος. Blogging is a bold endeavor. Anyone on whom this fact is lost is not fit to blog as a Christian. As in all things, it is important to use whatever makeshift platform we construct in this virtual Hyde Park in a responsible and humble manner.

19 July 2011 will mark the fifth anniversary for me of blogging on pretty much a daily basis. 16 August 2011 will mark six years since I began to blog. When I think about everything that has happened in my life over this period of time, the losses, the gains, the achievements, the disappointments, the triumphs and defeats, I am astounded. In fact, what is prompting these reflections this morning is that yesterday I substantially completed my master's degree thesis (known at my school as IPR, that is, Integrated Pastoral Research paper), Married Permanent Deacons: Ressourcement & Aggiornamento, and the imminent birth of another child. I have been working on graduate studies since Spring of 2007. I would be remiss not to note that by virtue of my blog I have been privileged to contribute an article on the diaconate to America magazine and to be picked up as an occasional contributor to Il Sussidiario. I would be even more remiss if I did not make note of how many wonderful friends I have that I would not even know were it not for blogging. All of this is humbling because, at least from where I sit, it is the work of Another.

Midnight Mass, Iraq, Christmas 2005, with Fr. Dave Fitzpatrick

Initially, I named my blog Scott Dodge for Nobody, which was a take on an old KRCL radio program that I loved, Tom Waits for Nobody, and, to a lesser degree, as a shout-out to my favorite book about Pater Tom, by his poet friend, Ron Seitz, entitled A Song for Nobody: A Memory Vision of Thomas Merton.

While I certainly hope and pray that my blog remains "a public cyberspace in which I seek to foster Christian discipleship in the late modern milieu in the diakonia of koinonia," I also hope and pray that blogging will continue to be a vehicle of personal growth and maturity, helping me to achieve my only goal in life, which is growing "to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13- ESV).