I’d like to start this blog with a confession. For just a moment, I am a Catholic, and you, dear reader, are my priest.

I spent the last few years far more interested in truth than goodness or beauty. A lot of my mental energy was taken up with the questions Who is right? Which is true? I actually noticed fiction and natural beauty having less of an effect on me. It was like the world was a little more grayscale, while I was a little distracted and obsessed with my epistemology hobby.

It was in this state that I started a blog, under another name. I only ever wrote a few posts. But a year ago I decided to put that obsession aside, for the sake of my spiritual life and my joy. I refocused on creating things, attending to the inspiring depths of God’s creation, and looking for neighbors to love (Luke 10:36).

But I still want to write, so I’ve decided to start this blog anew, hopefully more well-rounded this time.

Truth

Let me share with you how I got there in the first place. In 2020 I met an intelligent woman who had come to a few conspiracy theories on the basis of evidence and logic.  My evidence and logic had led me to disbelieve, but the reasonableness of her approach shook me. I suppose this was a tiny piece of what people experience when they convert religions or deconvert—in my case, this wasn’t about my faith as a whole, although she did follow a niche theology based on an unusual but apparently consistent reading of the New Testament. It took me a while to re-embrace the idea that objective truth can be found. But I walked away from the experience with a new appreciation for the reasonableness of the beliefs of those who disagree with me.

Back in 2019 I described myself as an “extreme moderate,” but that doesn’t quite describe myself, as I often do pick a side.  I think I’ve found a more accurate way of describing myself.  I’m very much bothered when there is a point of view not being considered in a conversation.  Most conversations should not have every view considered; but the question is whether opposing views have been considered or, when referenced, are referenced in their most faithful form.  I dislike echo chambers, and usually try to be the one to bring in a point of view I don’t see represented.

But I’m not out here just to become less wrong, like scoring points in some game.

Goodness and Beauty

On the paucity of focusing on truth alone, I don’t have much profound to say except to repeat what many others have said before. We must not forget the whole of our humanity: we are embodied creatures, dependent creatures, desiring creatures. Facts make no sense outside the context of a story.

The character of a man is measured by what he does, not by what he says—which is why I hesitate to write for strangers on the internet in the first place. You don’t know my private life. (I’m not going to even attempt to put it on display, lest I be tempted to make it an act or make a name for myself IRL—I’m here under a pseudonym.)

I feel the difference between reading topics that are factually interesting, and the effect that C.S. Lewis’s “The Weight of Glory” had on me when I first read it.

But the pursuit of goodness and beauty also suffer apart from truth. To make good art one must know what is beautiful; to love others one must know what is good. Writing is a good discipline for my own sake to sort these things out. You’re welcome to join me for the journey.

Action

Above, I wrote that I dislike echo chambers, but that’s not so much about truth alone either. If you’re in some echo chamber that says Uranus and Neptune don’t exist, I don’t care a whole lot. But I think a lot about the fact that IBM built technology for the Nazis. Not to hyperfocus on the details of that fact—other companies did too, and other governments carried out plenty of horrors in World War II as well, including my own. But it makes a poignant example. What would I do if I were working for IBM then? What would you do?

I would like everyone to ask themselves a little more, have I really considered what is the Best way to live out this or that area of life?  Breadth of perspectives is important to to that end, and I’ve had the blessing of experiencing a number of different subcultures that usually don’t talk to each other.

Since college, I’ve been blessed with the influence of a couple of subcultures in particular. I’ve found myself caught up in an intellectual Christian strain in the tradition of Pascal, Kuyper, and Chesterton—we use the label Christian humanist—to think seriously about how God’s glory displays in all creation.  “The ethical question ‘What is permissible?’ faded in relation to the question ‘What is the main thing, the essential thing?’”  At the same time, I’ve had the benefit of participating in a practical ministry with a philosophy that emphasizes being doers of the Word and every member a minister which leaves me never content to settle either for talk without action nor excusing ordinary people from being used by God.

I’m going to do my best not to write about Uranus and Neptune, nor to write about goodness that I don’t practice. Hopefully, if God allows, this can be a journal of my fleshing out the virtuous, just, beautiful, whole way to live, and be a springboard to living it.

Community

Now, as Alan Jacobs has written, “some conversations are be more meaningful and effective in living rooms, or at dinner tables, than in the middle of Main Street.” Previously, I was tempted to pitch this blog as a community, an “Attention to the Sky Club,” but it will never be. My community consists of those I spend evenings and weekends with face-to-face, and this blog has only a tenuous connection.

But maybe this blog can be something like a blueprint.

I am a firm believer that change happens mainly in the range between unseen internal character and the community level—for most of us, not directly on any larger scale than that. I am in community with others who desire inward character, service to others, and knowledge of our Creator and Savior, and we sharpen each other as iron sharpens iron. We are not writing our own stories; we are merely part of a grander story. Committing to community and loving your neighbor tie the most forgettable daily interactions to the eternal story God is writing. We progress by stepping back from what is distracting and urgent to take in the small, quiet, steady things of life that actually make up the biggest picture.

The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky.

Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), Sunlit Skies