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50,000

on this, my 945th post to this blog, i am looking backwards a bit.  you see, about 4 or 5 months after i started writing this blog, i started keeping track of how many people were stopping by.  at first it was just a curiousity, and then it became an exciting gauge of the incredible opportunites the world wide web affords us.  i have been amazed as you all have stopped by again and again, reading these words, sometimes responding to them, sometimes not.  more than a few times you've disagreed with me and told me about it.  probably more often than i'd like to think you've disagreed with me and not said a word of it to me.  you've enjoyed pictures of my kids, put up with my passion for steelers/yankees, and, hopefully, been blessed by the questions i've felt compelled to ask along the way. 

i'm thinking about all of this because today i will likely reach 50,000 offficial visits to my blog.  that seems like a milestone to me!  and so i am a bit reflective today about this whole blog thing: why i started it, why i continue it, and where it is going, if anywhere.  in all of that reflecting, i looked back at the first post i wrote in this digital space, back in october of 2006.  i wrote this:
__________________________________________________________________
so i guess its a bit more conventional to start with a preface. but i choose a proface. a preface is a face before. a proface is a first face. and i, of course, want to put my best face forward.
so, what is my first face?
today, of all days, i begin this little cyber-journey to maybe put some pixels together, some letters together, into a kind of first face. i want to fill this space with discoveries and disappointments. i want to be honest about my most hidden hopes, and leave space for the holy hushes of mystery and magic. i want to wander through my thoughts and ideas and dreams (both day and night) and expectations.
and so i don't begin this blog with a theme so much as with some questions: what can it mean for me to share these words with you? what is up around that bend? can we find community in the midst of a culture of consumerism? can a thing be Christian? what makes art good? or bad? or sacred? or profane? who is the greatest steelers linebacker ever? where do we go when we die? what is it about putting images together in unusual ways that uncovers a corner of the shroud of mystery for me and allows me to see just a glimpse of some great and scary and completely unbelievable God?


i'm not sure these are the kinds of questions that get answered. but i'm not here for answers. i hope you aren't either. i'm here to ask questions. and enjoy the journey. so i am looking forward to it, for forward is the only way i can look, with this, my first face.


greg.
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i hope it's been that kind of journey for you.  i know it has been for me over these 50,000 visits.  thanks for being a part of it! 
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Comments

Crafty P said…
that is so cool! WOW! you are such a devoted blogger. So great having real friends out in the blogosphere, too.

ps love the photos of Jackson below! That is a bright and happy shirt!
4:17 PM
Greg C. said…
I've greatly enjoyed stopping by and finding out what's going on in your head/life and of course on those days when what you have to say meets me where I am in my journey is an added bonus! This is going to become all the more relevant/important/purposeful in another month or so!
So keep up the good work and here's to the next 50k. As you say: Grace|Peace
1:29 PM
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