A Change in Direction

Today was the 15th Annual Catholic Men's Conference of the Archdiocese of Dubuque.  This is my 6th year of attendance.  I am so thankful to God that the Diocese I live in has an event like this every year.  It's such an uplifting experience and I look forward to it every year.

I learned many things today, but two things stick out.  The first is from the Keynote Speaker, Curtis Martin.  The theme of the afternoon keynote was that we Catholic Christians (and all Christians in general) need to have a Christ-centered world view.  The second theme that sticks out comes from Deacon Sean Smith, who gave a presentation on Proclaiming the Gospel in a Digital Age.  If you read the post, you'll see that Sean pointed us to a message from Pope Benedict addressing the use of new technologies in proclaiming the gospel.  The short of it is that we should use the technology today to further the Kingdom of God...everything else is just for fun or a time waster.  Fun doesn't have to be a bad thing, but our end must not be fun.  As Curtis Martin hit on in the morning keynote, fun is comfort, and we are not made for comfort, we are made for greatness.  Ok, I guess that is three things that stuck out for me.

So, between Curtis Martin and Deacon Sean, I felt a bit convicted about my blog.  While the original purpose of this blog was a man diary started out of the frustration of the 2008 Presidential Election, I feel like it needs to be more now, I'm being called to make it more.  I've been trying to change my blogging ways recently.  As some of you may have noticed, I've quit blogging about politics, or at least slowed way down.  As I've been spending more time on my faith, the political back and forth has meant less and less to me.  Additionally, even though I do not agree with our President on anything other than Golf is really fun, it doesn't help anybody if I waste my time ripping on the President on this blog.  From today on, I plan to keep my political blogs to a minimum, and when I do comment politically, I plan to look at the political issues of the day from a Christ-centered world view, rather than a Republican point of view.  After all, I'm a Christian first and that's how I should be looking at these things.

I don't plan to stop doing movie reviews, book reviews, posting recipes or talking about sports.  After all, fun is ok, as long as fun doesn't become a god.  Remember, we aren't made for comfort (or fun), we are made for greatness.  I am, going to make an effort in all my blogs, to take a Christ-centered world view.  For example, if a movie is wholly immoral, I'm going to make sure that is included in my review, so my Christian friends can make appropriate decisions.

I pray that all my friends who currently read my blog will continue to read this blog, and hopefully get a little more out of it going forward.  I feel that I've moved beyond the need for a man diary, and really want to get into some more in depth sharing with my friends on this blog.  But, for those who worry that it'll lose it's random charm, don't worry, it's still my random ramblings because I think I have undiagnosed A.D.D., so random thing pop my head all the time, and some of those things continue to be blog worthy.