(Re-posting from 2018)

I just used the WordPress feature of tracking the access of my blog posts. It isn’t that time consuming, haha, hardly a dozen eyeballs a week find my posts. Notice I didn’t say read and comment!

Anyway, over the last few years I’ve noticed that one post usually gets several hits per month. I wrote about Abraham traveling West from Ur. I wondered about the possible storytelling around the fire. He was part of the foreign ruling culture of Ur, and he was probably literate in Sumerian, so I researched what I could about Sumerian proverbs, thinking that they might be entertaining, and appropriate campfire content.

And apparently a lot of others are interested as well. It is still the most popular post on my blog.

I started this blog about four years ago, partly in response to my retirement. I say partly because it is unclear which motive kick-started my action. While I did teach about blogging and general web activity, I didn’t really have the time to do much personal work. I was on Facebook but mostly lurking and connecting with my students.

After retiring, many people asked about the free time that I had acquired. I admit I went through several “hobby” activities. They were fun, but I approached them with “project mode,” an intensity that looked toward completion. I was “done” in a few weeks with each of them.

I was tired of listing the various activities that I had burned through, so I made up a story. “Well, I spend a certain amount of time pondering, and then writing posts to my blog.” Except that I wasn’t. So obviously I was convicted to make that a truth. I do ponder, especially when I have the time, and I did spend years thinking out loud in classrooms. So why not actually write down some thoughts and keep them in a publicly accessible archive?

I didn’t really think that one through.

Part of me really wants to make some serious edits. Not everything pondered should see the light of day. Especially years later.

So again I looked through the history of my posts, wondering where I was then, and where I am now. One of the first posts was about Ivan Illich, a thinker, author, and educator. On reading this I marveled at my undisciplined approach, wandering all over in big sweeping circles, barely keeping the focus, almost like bird or fish murmurations. Where was I going?

Yep, that’s how I think, “thought murmurations,” and who has the time to read through that?

I have now spent several hours watching YouTube murmurations. I am enthralled! I desperately want to experience this firsthand. I can remember once, while my family fished from the levee on the Sacramento River early in the morning, a dense black river of starlings going east, flying just yards above the water.

It was continuous and it must have taken an hour, with very few gaps in the cloud of feathers. They didn’t break and create spirals in the sky, they were directed and linear. They had some place to go!

The funny thing was that later in the afternoon they came back, just as dense, and just as directed. Black feathers blotting out the sky!

I remember reading stories about herds of bison that took days crossing a particular river. Then, a few short years and mountains of bones later, they were mostly gone. Murdered almost as successfully as the dodo. Hmm, man can change the environment, and he has!

Back to murmurations, I just can’t imagine how signals are communicated so quickly, and accurately.

“Wait, you want me to follow you? Where are we going? What do you mean it’s partly up to Me?”

At least to me, it feels beyond human understanding.