NEW BLOG

This morning I created a new blog. Someone asked me recently why I had so many blogs--almost hinting that I might be self-absorbed. ME, self-absorbed!! How could anyone imaging that! But beyond self-absorption, most of my blogs are what I call "content" blogs where I keep a lot of information. In fact, this morning when I was researching a woman in church history the first site I came to was one of my own blogs. I also store the church history text and other manuscripts I'm working on in draft form on my SECURITY blogs so that if our house imploded tomorrow I would have my material saved out there in cyberspace.

WHO IS JOHN McCAIN?

Headlined in today's Grand Rapids Press: "Milliken backs away from McCain." Here are the first sentences:

GRAND RAPIDS--He endorsed John McCain in the presidential primary, but now former Republican Gov. William Milliken is expressing doubts about his party's nominee.

"He is not the McCain I endorsed," said Milliken, reached at his Traverse City home Thursday. "He keeps saying, 'Who is Barack Obama?' I would ask the question, 'Who is John McCain?' . . . I'm disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues."

WHO IS JOHN McCAIN?

In 2000 I posted signs on my properties for McCain, and he was the first presidential candidate I ever supported financially. Who is McCain. He's not the "Straight-Talk Express" McCain we once knew.

NEW TRANSLATION

Today in the mail I received 3 copies of a Korean translation of my book Left Behind in A Megachurch World. I was surprised---not even aware that a translation had been in progress. There are a lot of megachurches in Korea, and smaller churches are often dismissed as failures, so I hope the book serves to encourage pastors and parishioners of "left-behind" churches.

I continue to plug away at writing my church history text, still hoping to complete it in very rough form by the end of the year. This evening, granddaughter Kayla (12) asked me if I know the quote by Gertrude Stein: "To write is to write is to write is to write is to write. . . ." I needed to be reminded again of those words.

John continues to read to me every night and morning. We are right now in the midst of Abel Sanchez by Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936), a Spanish author who writes provocatively about religious topics. This novella is about Abel and his best friend Joaquin (Jo-Cain). It is a Cain and Abel story and we are eager to find out how it ends. The first story we read by Unamuno was "Saint Manuel the Good, Martyr," the story of a priest who continued to serve both his parish and God long after he had lost his faith.