Yeah, I'm going to keep doing this. I don't otherwise have much of a voice and this way I know that at least someone is reading my nonsense and maybe even taking some of it...seriously?
I suppose this blog is like a safety valve in some ways. Seriously, before I started writing it just three short years ago I thought my head was going to explode. So here on these pages, in the interests of public health and safety, the genesis of Content Under Pressure.
I first called it Contents Under Pressure, but I removed the s and this seems to work more consistently with the theme, or should I say, multiple themes, of this blog. The word content could be taken either one of two ways: content as in what it contains, or content as in feeling tranquil and happy. This content is under pressure. It cooks, bakes, boils and broils throughout the day and night, coping with the every day greyness of every day life, the fallout of stupid policy decisions made by venal politicians, the wonder of nature, the beauty of holiness and much, much more. The pressure shapes, forms and molds and helps create the content which is eventually spat out on these pages for your enjoyment and outrage, Gentle Reader.
By the same token, I like to remain content under pressure. Not always an easy task given all the crap that life can throw at us. But a skill worth acquiring, honing, developing and perfecting. I am, sometimes, content under pressure. And I am often dying to share with you, Gentle Reader, my secret for doing this.
Not a day passes when I don't have something to write: it could be something I heard or read in the news, or something I saw on the bus or the street, or at work, or an insight or revelation while enjoying one of my interminable walks. It could be ideas and suggestions of how to get through the day, make it through the night, cope with difficult people and circumstances. Or I will write about matters of social and environmental justice, of spiritual realities, of the need and the simple drive and hunger to explore that beautiful universe that surrounds us, encompasses and inhabits us.
I mean to inspire you, inform, teach, scandalize and question you, Gentle Reader. I mean to draw and invite you to explore and journey with me on this strange pilgrimage that we share. I want these words to become a kind of key, a lodestone of revelation of the love of God. I do not have the answers. I am also struggling and here on this blog I am inviting all my readers from all over the world to share in me this struggle and to refuse to accept complacency or easy answers. I want us all to become better people through these words, more curious, kinder, more loving, more truthful and more open.
Even though I might appear to have strong opinions, Gentle Reader, I don't really. For me it is all a work in progress. On these pages I think out loud. I will express outrage and indignation, or wonder, or curiosity, or annoyance or simple unabashed joy. I embrace ambiguity, nuance and paradox, not as enemies nor as frightening realities but as components of the multifarious beautiful mystery that is the universe and our rather tiny and strange part in it.
And in these pages, Gentle Reader, I would have you do the same.
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