Intro...

Well, it happened.

I can't say I ever really thought it would, but true to form what first I shunned and procrastinated, I have now conceded to, and I'm sure in turn, will come to embrace. Yes, like the many before me I have staked out my spot on this Virtual Everest of Internet blogging and set up camp.

My reasoning is simple. For once, I feel like I have something to say. It's quite a novel revelation -- one that's managed to stay aloof for most of my life. I'm sure this is the reason I don't keep a journal, and yet I've found (especially after writing home every week from the mission field for two years) that once you have someone to write for, you find you have something to write. Every thought becomes a story and every experience, an epic; and before you know it you've said something of substance. So often I have felt like the commentary running through my mind was nothing more but mental excretion, just the runoff from some cerebral spring that should be kept close to the chest and out of other people's heads. In a way I still believe this. I'm sure that most blogs on our mountain are just that -- Mind Fodder; a pile of mental manure from people who take themselves too seriously and who really believe that what they write will become the stuff of legends, or at least the fulfillment of some child's Make a Wish Foundation request. But who can blame them? With People Magazine subscriptions being filled out every day we are left with the old adage ringing in our ears, that one man's trash really can be another man's treasure.

But if we can step away from the cynical for just a moment and leave aside the never-ending stream of bathroom puns, I think blogging introduces something that is altogether therapeutic, if not liberating. The chance to be heard. The desire to make one's thoughts known have been the catalyst for most people's actions since Adam. Cain said "I desire power more than family" in the slaying of his brother just as Jesus said the opposite in the completion of the Atonement; The Protester tells us how he thinks of our country when he assassinates our President, just as the Secret Service agent who jumps to take the bullet. We all need to make our presence known somehow, and I think the only desire that outweighs that more is wanting to know that our presence means something to someone else. You've asked the questions, just as I have: If I say what I feel will someone hear it? If I write what I think will someone read it? And will they care?

Maybe not, and that's why I've decided to entitle my work "A Shot in the Dark." I feel like I've got the gun in my hand with arm outstretched and one hand over my eyes with head turned away. I don't know what this is going to turn into but I might as well pull the trigger sooner rather than later. Just know dear Reader that I write for you.