New Year, New Thoughts

Reflecting on the things I write about in this blog, I realize I cover many of the same themes and points over and over. I suppose it is like climbing a mountain, on a circular path that winds around it, much like in Dante's Purgatorio.

I hope that each time I come around to the same points and themes, my understanding and compassion for others has increased a bit from the last time. I hope I put away some of the wrath I have felt, and able to understand God's mercy a bit better than last time.

One of the reasons I do not want to be a well-known blogger is that I would feel beholden to a consistency as a public figure. Here in these pages I can write the same laments and insights over and over, and there is no consequence. I am a work in progress, slowly molded. Next year, God willing, I will write about some of the same things.

Over the past year what I did notice that was new was that my last liberal friends have found it increasingly difficult to tolerate my presence in their lives. All of this, I assure you, is due to their heightened awareness of my convictions, which only comes by their direct questions to me. The fact that I do not back down in my beliefs, but calmly try to explain my point of view has enraged them even further. 

All of this I see as a sign that we have gone to another level in the Culture War.  I expect to lost all of them by the time it breaks. So long as I keep my relationship with God, then I will feel joy through it all.  There is nothing they can do to shake that. I think they have realized that, and that's what drives them nuts about me. In the end, the only recourse for them is to shut me out of their lives, and forget they knew me.

But I will not forget I knew them. Even if they send my Christmas cards back with an obscene scrawl over them (I am half expecting that), it will not matter. I will still love them. I meant to do this, I know, and my conviction of this only grows with time.

What will I be writing about next year, provided I am still writing this blog? Who knows. I keep writing here because it is the surest way to get thoughts out of my head, that are swirling around. If I write them down, they make room for other thoughts. This is why I write. I have to.

With my new physics blog, I can empty my mind from rational scientific thoughts, of which I have many lately. But really the way to do that is to write something for a peer-reviewed journal. This is what I am also doing today. Or trying to. It's a lot harder than these notes, in a way, although there is nothing personal in them. They are supposed to be he opposite of personal. A different challenge. By next year this time I hope I have left all my current physics thoughts in the dust, because I will have written them down, and new ones, completely foreign to me now, have taken their place.