Get ready for… Perplexionary

Hard to believe: I launched this blog over three months ago. It’s outlived my food blog from undergrad. It has more posts than my high school Xanga. In fact, I’ve managed to maintain my Monday/Thursday posting schedule (with some, er, soft posts around the holidays), which I guess just goes to show how far stubbornness determination can go.

Apparently the three-month mark is a big one for bloggers. Why? Because it’s when a lot of people quit their blogs. I have no plans to quit just yet, but I am feeling the need to adjust things a bit. So along with the “two cents” guest posts (think about contributing!) I’m going to delve into something of biblical commentary.

What am I thinking?

Answer: I don’t know. But it sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Be forewarned: I am no esteemed scholar. My formal biblical education consists of four years of Baptist high school, a core course in undergrad, and a few months of EfM. I’m flying loose here, folks.

Since I like naming things, I wanted to nickname this new venture, too. My first thought was reflection + lectionary (= reflectionary), but that’s already the title of somebody else’s blog, which made it feel cheap. Besides, being perplexed about the lectionary (i.e. perplexionary––because the “x” makes it awesome) is probably a more accurate moniker for yours truly to be using. Because, let’s be honest, there’s some pretty perplexing stuff hanging out in the Bible.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the lectionary (and so can’t tell that my title is punny), it’s a schedule of Scripture reading followed by a number of Christian denominations. Well, that’s a little deceiving—there are variations on the lectionary—but the gist is the same. TEC uses the Revised Common Lectionary, which cycles through Scripture on a three-year track (the CRC I attended during undergrad was also heavily invested in the RCL).

I like the lectionary because it means the special liturgical seasons have seasonally appropriate readings and it means that over three years, a significant portion of Scripture is covered. One facet of this is that preachers don’t get to cherry-pick texts—there’s the lectionary: you’ve got three readings and a Psalm and that’s it. I admire the preachers in my life who work with this, because, as I’ve said, there’s some perplexing stuff that can surface.

For me, here, “Perplexionary” will be a venue for me to pick out the lectionary text(s) I find most perplexing (maybe I’ll do this each week, maybe not), and think aloud about it. Nothing fancy. Nothing definitive. Just my thoughts.

The big twist here: I’m going to try playing around with video. I don’t really like video. I like writing, in sweatpants, my hair mussed, some mood music playing. I’m an introvert and a homebody, and also sort of a luddite for someone my age (i.e. 23) in my position (i.e. comp instructor/grad student at a tech-heavy institution).

In short: I’m bad at video. But it’s cool. And I got a sweet digital video camera for Christmas that I’m determined to make good use of. So, we’ll see how this goes.

Gratefully accepting all your words of advice, encouragement and commentary along the way!