A reader comments that the Gospel of Thomas is “becoming a little tiresome for me,” and asks if I could “intersperse it with the general topics with TGU, much more interesting for me, and usually covers points in my life unexplained until your conversations.” (The final sentence of the comment was: “maybe your agenda can’t accommodate my request.” That made me smile. My agenda, except in the very broadest sense, doesn’t seem to have much to do with what happens! )
The comment made me realize that perhaps I should explain my process. WordPress allows you to pre-schedule posts, so that is often what I do. For instance, I schedule my series “America’s Long Journey” to post every Sunday. And for a long time I have been scheduling conversations from my earlier days to post several times a week.
Typically, I will get industrious and do the work of preparing and scheduling several of them at one time. On particularly industrious days, I may schedule a couple of weeks into the future, and then forget about it until my queue of pre-scheduled posts starts to approach empty. Then I do another spurt of work.
Recently, though, two things happened. I got involved in discussing Thomas with the guys, and at the same time I allowed my pre-scheduling queue to run dry. For a combination of personal reasons, I haven’t done the work to prime that particular pump, and in fact I have been goofing off on the Thomas discussions as well. Hopefully I’ll do better.
A general FYI: I signed up for Ruth Shillings’ Egypt trip for Feb 2-16 (she’s got two trips going in Feb) and am so excited. This will be Ruth’s 57th trip, and she’s a big part of why I’m going. As she says, it’s a calling more than a usual vacation. If anyone else feels called to go, I hope you’ll let me know.
With all due respect to your reader’s comment, I personally feel you are in no way obligated to cater to readers’ desires as to content. Please feel free to post whatever you feel led to post (or not post) and I will feel free to read or not as my interest moves me. We are all guided by what perks our interests, are we not? I find so much of your content significant and I am very grateful that you post anything. Thank you!!
@Jann M: Along the same lines, neither should Frank feel obligated to continue with Thomas, if he ever does not quite feel like it. @Jaycee: I’m with you, BTW. @Frank: maybe “goofing off” points to something deeper?
“Goofing off” is usually time doing something else so as to allow a concept (or thought) to percolate or marinate. You just can’t rush some things.