please pass the blog jam

"Would you like some toast with that?"

There is something newly present to me. It's in my face, taking up all of the available thought space. And I'm not sharing it with you. I've been wanting to keep it private - not expose my secret obsession.

But that gives me a new problem. Not sharing this large life thing has made me pull back from sharing much of anything. Sometimes I like to convince myself that I am made up of little compartments. The evidence shows that I am really much more like a body of water, a bowl of dough (hey, don't take that too far!), a human person -- something integrated, interconnected. This secret part affects my other parts - a little yeast and all.

So here it is. I'm pregnant. Surprise! (It certainly was for us!) Get ready for blog after blog of pregnancy related blather. Hopefully this will clear up this bad case of blog jam. We be jammin', we be jammin', hey hey!

Of course this makes me wonder about you. and me. in the larger community. I'm wondering about fear of exposing our secret obsessions and how that affects us, affects our willingness to "enter in". Of course we don't have to tell everyone everything but sometimes we become frightened hedgehogs, turning in upon ourselves, hiding. What are we afraid of? What has our experience of community been? My friend Jan described community as "solid". Solid?!? Wow! Her perspective gives me hope. Could a community actually be a place that could help me to stay open to God in places of pain, discomfort, uncertainty? I kept my secret not because I was afraid to share my joy but because I am afraid to share my pain. My experience is that people get weird about other's pain. So to alleviate my own community fears I want to say this: I invite you to be with me - I neither want nor need you to fix this experience for me - which is sure to be filled with both joy and pain. (I still welcome your comments!)