I am beginning this blog without a clear view of its designs and purposes. I will be in Mississippi this summer (God willing), learning to teach, teaching to learn, learning to learn, and teaching to teach. I will have plenty to write about, and my boss knows it. So along with that job I will be required to keep a frequently updated blog about my work, my frustrations and successes, my students, etc. I expect that I’ll enjoy discovering the habit of public writing again; I used to be quite an avid blogger, and (believe it or not) I never did lose the desire to have others pay attention to what I’ve written. My work-blog, however, will only ask that I write on some matters and not others. These others, which include some of the most important themes, will be deemed superfluous. And this is, I guess, the clearest view I can get of this blogs purpose:—the place of my supposedly superfluous speculations and stories. These articles will be the overflow, likely the products of a peculiar mood that demands something shown for one’s thoughts.
Apropos of this blog’s overall motif—its title, being an allusion to 1 Chronicles 29.15, the Pascal quotes, the French text here and there—I shall not claim much now. I enjoy French, and so there is French. I have spent some time reading, translating, and plainly admiring Pascal, and so there is Pascal. King David, whose words are cited in the Bible reference, is among those whom I most admire in all literary history and historical literature, and so goes the title. I have plenty to say about all three of these, but none of these opinions will give a better understanding of this blog’s design or purpose, because they are at this point not very well woven into it. These elements are only here in this combination because I am thus. The elements of my blog would all fit together more neatly if my soul were a bit more tidy. I am, however, such a monster of thoughts, memories, interests, habits, sins, graces. At best a monster can only make monsters. Should anything come from my contrarieties that has on it the mark of orderliness, peace, purity, perfection, etc., then this can only be due to the intervention of my God. So I leave the sundry elements of this blog to themselves, hoping that they will all make sense in the end, just as I trust my Lord to take the shattered things in me and make them into something thoroughly whole.
