This summer I took a semi-intentional break from blogging. This was partly just a dry-spell in post ideas that turned into an extended hiatus, but it was also time for a gut-check for me. When I started blogging back in '09, I didn't really have a long term plan for the blog, and I was starting to wonder in '012 if I'd said all there was to say about God, life, faith, love, words and spirituality.
Enough people mention terra incognita to me off and on that I know there's somebody out there reading this. But I reached a point this June where the only thing I could think of when I sat down at the dashboard was: why bother? And so I didn't for a while.
Google tells me there's a name for this malaise. At least, enough hits turn up when I type "blogging fatigue" into the search engine that I know I'm not alone. So I decided to take a breather. If you love something, they say, let it go. If it comes back to you it was meant to be.
It did come back to me. Sometime around the end of July, I started to find renewed inspiration and purpose for this site. However, rather than jumping right back in with the usual promises to do better - writing cheques I couldn't cash and all - I thought I'd just start writing without the pressure of posting for a while and see where that got me. A month or so later I've got enough posts on deck that I feel confident to announce the "relaunch" of terra incognita with a guarantee of regular posting through to January. (Given the price of this blog, I'm even prepared to make that a money-back guarantee.)
For those who have been with me on this journey since the out-set, let me thank you here for your patience as we grow to serve you better.
For those of you who are visiting for the first time, a word about this blog. terra incognita is Latin for "unknown country." It's a reference to the way Jesus leads us into unknown territory (literally or spiritually speaking) whenever we follow him in faith. You can think of this blog as a giant spiritual connect the dot, where we try to draw lines between 1) stuff I see going on in the Bible, 2) stuff I see going on in the world, 3) stuff I'm reading about, and 4) stuff I love about art, culture, media and literature.
I hope you'll pick up a crayon and join me.
Back in the Blogging Saddle
A blog by any other name
Terra Incognita was actually my second choice as a title for this blog. Originally I'd planned to call it "One Hand Clapping," because I thought that sounded all tongue-in-cheek-zen and esoteric and what not; it seemed like a good name for a blog about faith, words and spirituality. But when I googled "one hand clapping" I discovered that the name was already taken... and this by a po-mo-emergent-Christian-blogger-type whose theological interests included things like the intersections between ecology and faith and guys like N. T. Wright. Go figure. I followed Onehandclapping for a while, just to see if fools seldom differed, after all. We differed once in a while, but it is an interesting blog: I'd recommend it.
So I settled on terra incognita, a title that came from what was one of my favorite D. H. Lawrence poems, back in the pre-fully-devoted-follower-of-Jesus days. But I was curious today about who else might be using terra incognita as a label for their paricular creative endeavors, and, a few google searches later, I had a sizeable list of organizations and individuals exploring the "unknown regions" of their own areas of interest, passion or enthusiasm. For the curious (and for lack of better post-fodder) I offer my top ten here:
10. Terra Incognita (the album)-- the title of a 2009 album by rocker Juliette Lewis.
9. Terra Incognita (the RPG)-- a "roleplaying games [sic] of exploration, intrigue, and mystery, featuring adventurer-scholars whose exploits span the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries."
8. Terra Incognita (the novel)-- a novel by Ruth Downie about the Roman Empire in the time of Emperor Hadrian.
7. Terra Incgonita (the travelogue)-- Sara Wheeler's account of her 7-month journey to Antarctica.
6. Terra Incognita (the (other) blog)-- a blog about "Spirituality, shamanism, ethnobotany, visionary art, images & photos, roots reggae and other good listenings, bizarre & interesting things, cult movies, trips & travels, underground & counterculture..."
5. Terra Incognita (the documentary film company)-- a company that makes documentary films that "map the unknown territories of our current knowledge."
4. terra incognita (the arts organisation)-- "a British, not for profit, visual arts and curatorial organisation, that tries to challenge both the London art world and wider society with their proposals for other ways of doing things."
3. Terra Incognita (the museum exhibit production studio)-- an "interpretive design studio that produces interactive educational experiences for museums."
2. Terra Incognita (the eco-tourism outfit)-- a tourism company that promotes "responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people"
1. Terra Incognita (the screenplay (that James Cameron alegedly ripped off for the film Avatar))-- apparently James Cameron is being sued by a Vancouver reseranteur named Emil Malak, who claims he sent the screenplay of his 1995 novel Terra Incognita to James Cameron, and heard nothing from him. But when he saw the movie Avatar, he noted uncanny similarities to his work that couldn't be mere coincidence.
Updates update
No deep thoughts today. I was feeling that my blog was starting to look a little ho-hum, so last night I spent my blogging time tinkering with the clock-works, sweeping out the corners, polishing the furniture and generally spiffing the place up.
Here's a little techie update:
- New widgets. As you can tell from the sidebar, I got a little widget happy last night. Now instead of just reading about what I'm reading, hearing, watching in the wide world of media these days, you can enjoy a widget-guided tour. Gotta love that LibraryThing.
- New posting parameters. I discovered that for a long time I had my comments settings set so that only blogger account-holders could post a comment. My bad. If you've tried to post something on terra incognita in the past and got turned down, let me now profusely apologize. I've corrected this and would like to take this opportunity to invite any and all readers to post a comment as they feel so led.
- New blogs on the blog roll. I've updated my blog roll. Most of these are blogs of friends and instructors of mine from Briercrest. I'd encourage you to check them out.
- Soon-to-be-new media hosting. Since leaving Saskatchewan, I haven't yet found a new web-host for my media files. Until I do, some of the music files in back-issues of terra incognita will be offline. Please bear with this inconvenience as we grow to serve you better.
Summer Reruns
4. Genesis 18:1-15
7. The Transfiguration
8. Worship, culture and eschatology
into unknown lands
Not that I think what the world most needs is yet one more blog. However, as I am now more-or-less finished my M.Div studies at Briercrest, and gazing into a horizon with no pressing theological issues for me to tackle, I'm realizing I'll need some forum to keep up with the challenge of reading/thinking/writing about God, Christ, church, Scripture, ministry and life. Of course, the horizon also has quite a bit of haze right now, as I try to faithfully discern God's leading for our next step in ministry, so I'm hoping that blogging might help me stay sharp as I wait through this transition time.
A word on the title: new to the blog world, I'm only beginning to discover how important a blog's name is-- it has to some how capture the spirit of the blog and the character of the blogger, resonating with that perfect combination of the unique-but-unpretentious and intriguing-but-not-too-obscure. Terra Incognita (Latin for "unknown land") probably fails on most of these counts, but it does capture my sense that my next step after Seminary-- as with most meaningful steps we take following Christ-- will be a step into real terra incognita. Lots of promise and possibility, no doubt, but also a good share of questions, wonder and uncertainty.