The first of many...

So this begins a new adventure. Why now? Well roughly 48 hours ago I pulled the plug on my Facebook account. No, I didn’t delete it, but I did deactivate it in order to be more productive, and to love well. (I’ll be posting the note I wrote about that, no worries.) What an odd feeling that was at midnight – Sunday. It almost felt that I was trading my life for something uncertain. So many hours a day were spent there on facebook having “relationships” with friends. What about REALationships? I guess that’s what my intentional step away from social-networking is about. Getting back to investing my life and time into those I love, and even those I don’t know.

Aside from looking at tons of amateur photos the thing that I have already missed most is being able to express myself through writing. I know. I know. You’re like, “But it’s only been 48 hours.” Very true, but that still doesn’t relieve me of that longing. Over the past couple of years I have written about the things I’ve been wrestling with most deeply. From pacifism to relationship drama to nationalism in the church to love to political musings to stories of serving the homeless on cold - dark nights. These were difficult and brutally honest glimpses into what often transpires in my head or heart. Sometimes I’d title these posts as my “Transparency Campaign”, hence this blog’s name.

What I’ve discovered in sharing these things, and in sharing my personal testimony of a very “dark” time almost 11 years ago when I contemplated suicide; is that I/ we are not alone. Too many times I’ve lied to peoples’ faces. And the most disturbing thing was this lying most frequently took place in a church setting. The typical question from a fellow churchgoer, “How are you this morning?” followed by my fake smile and the insincere, “I’m great!” What would have happened if my response deviated from the typical, or was answered with truth? Maybe I had a shitty day. What  if I was suicidal? How would that parishioner have responded? While I don’t want to burden my reader with ranting about things, I do feel there is value in being transparent. It is during these times that I am encouraged even if I’m broken. We are all broken in our own ways.

I’d love this blog to be a place where I can keep my writing skills sharp yet offer up thought provoking material without the juvenile banter of Facebook. Point-Blank Prose & Propaganda. That is what you’ll find here. And right off the bat those two words, Prose & Propaganda, cause some tension. Over the years I’d heard the word “prose”, but I never took the time to understand it. Prose means writing matter-of-factly. And well, then there’s propaganda. The deliberate spreading of information. So that’s what I’m hoping to accomplish here at The Transparency Campaign. Transparent matter-of-fact thinking and information. I’d love to have you along on the journey. It may be dangerous, but as long as we’re in this together we’ll come out stronger.

"[...] Teachers are suspect; writers are suspect, because people who use words are able to work out complex ideas, to see injustice, and perhaps even try to do something about it."

- Madeleine L'Engle 

Welcome.