What's up with the title; what's up with me

I tried blogging elsewhere. The effort was underwhelming, but the intentions were lofty. Hardly enough to single me out among bloggers. [Look at that! The Blogger dictionary doesn't recognize the word "blogger." Interesting.]

Anyway, I fancied myself possibly alienating people with those lofty intentions, so I made an effort to conceal my identity -- a modern Publius. [If you don't know, open another tab and look it up; I guarantee you'll be chuckling to yourself and admiring my wit and breadth of cultural knowledge. I know I was.]

[NB: I am trying my best to avoid emoticons. I'll do my best to communicate it otherwise, but a good general rule is that if it makes me sound like an ass-hole, it was sarcastic.]

[NB, II: I like parenthetical statements. If they obfuscate, I apologize, but I really can't write without them, and I don't feel like editing them out.]

Back to Publius. I have trouble being too diplomatic when I am at the forefront of communication. I thought that anonymity would allow me certain freedoms that I might not otherwise enjoy. The problem is that an anonymous blogging self is even more detached from community than a named blogging self, so the motivation to write was even lower than it might have been. So I decided to attach my name to a blog and to try to write honestly anyway. You might laugh, but self-knowledge makes it difficult enough; adding in the critical voice of the most judgmental person you know -- and who can make your life miserable for the knowledge -- that can definitely contribute to shriveling and retracting on a par with a cold swim in the ocean. It is possible that I may alienate some or all of you who already know me, while making new and previously unknown enemies at a historically unprecedented rate, but this needs to be me.

You know that feeling in high school that you always had to hide a bit of who you were in order to fit in? On some level, I have felt stuck there for the last twenty years. At its best this blog will serve as a step toward integrity (in its literal sense). I know that writing into the ether is a surefire way to display that inner anal sphincter, but it is my sincere desire to write with candor and love, open to who you are but honest.

I was initially tempted to offer a summary of beliefs that characterize me, but the temptation [yours, I mean] to read them as a kind of totalizing manifesto would be practically irresistible. Far too many evils arise from people who know about before they know. I'd rather not contribute to the chaos. Besides, I don't want to do all of my alienating at once.

Two final notes for today:

1. I love film. Some of my friends perceive studying movies too deeply as the worst kind of intellectual masturbation. They may be right, but I'd rather err on the side of too reflective than not reflective enough. I'll save the spiel about cultural parables for another time... maybe.
2. The name of the blog. It means (or is supposed to mean) "common grace," a term loaded with connotation. To some it may signify that I am a religious zealot; to others that I am a bad Christian who is trying to rationalize his "worldliness." The truth is that I am probably far more offensive than either of those characterizations can encompass. Whatever your perception of my error, I hope you'll hang around, open to the possibility that all beauty is divine beauty. I really don't strive to be dangerous ("but then again," to quote Gaff, "who does?"). Who knows; you just might convince me to change my ways. Less substantively, I should add that know just enough Latin to know that I probably messed up the endings on the blog's title. Regardless of my linguistic or philosophical problems, I think that I'm going to keep the name. It's just easier.

I hope this blog becomes bigger than my own narcissistic logorrhea. At the very least, I'm aiming to develop a writer's discipline through it.

Peace.