A Hudson Bay
Launch
In the 1800’s the Hudson Bay Traders embarked upon their hunting and fur trading expeditions, typically leaving the home site around 4pm and breaking camp just a few hours and miles away. This early unpacking revealed whether any vital equipment or resources were forgotten and left behind. The fastest man in the crew would hustle back to retrieve the omitted items. Other expeditions, including the famed Lewis & Clark Expedition, later employed this Hudson Bay
trademark method. Now even the corporate world has found ways to implement the strategy when test-marketing a new product or service.
Starting a blog can cause a temporarily paralysis—not necessarily a writer’s block. It’s being immobilized at your laptop because of indecision—do I casually introduce myself and my reason for blogging or do I impress my readers with something profound right out of the gate?
I’ve been journaling regularly since 1985 and have wished for a more public forum to share some of my entries and thoughts. I have been encouraged by many current readers of my books and articles to start a blog. The procrastination has not been due to a lack of inspiration or content but tethered to a technological handicap. I am grateful to Randy Elrod who planted the blog seeds in my soil last year and is handling the set-up and design of my blog. Thank you to Susan Tjaden, editor of Single Adult Ministry Journal, who gave affirmation and space to several of my article ideas and became my Colorado
friend in the process. Susan gave me the pivotal push on this blog with encouragement and gentle nagging.
So this is my Hudson Bay Start, launching out into the cyber territory of blogging, which is probably familiar ground to most of you, but is pioneer territory to me. What should interest you in my future ramblings? In reasoning the value of his autobiography, The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner wrote, “My assumption is that the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all.” Thus I am hoping that features of my story, my impressions & interpretations of the world around me, and reflections upon the spinning globe inside me will resonate with something in you. Something that plucks a string inside your own spirit, enough so that you hear and pay attention to it, engage it, respond to it.
I agree with G.K. Chesterton when he wrote, “All happenings great and small are parables whereby God speaks. The art of life is to get the message.” My experience and conviction is that Chesterton speaks truthfully, and it is the basis of Sight Lines: Seeing God in All of Life. Time will seldom permit me to reply but I genuinely welcome
and look forward to your comments, especially the kind that confirms that you indeed heard the Story Teller speaking into your own story, affirming His validation and fascination with the characters, scenes, plots and subplots of your epic tale.