Two, sometimes the most effective rhetoric is not soliloquy or one-man-versus-the-world (ala Athanasius) sort of speaking, but rather dialogue. Or a concert of voices. For example, take the way we study the Bible. Fruitful study comes not only when I have my own interpretations and thoughts, but when I also check them--converse--with commentators and scholars who have studied the same passage with more rigor. We stand, if not on the shoulders of giants, at least shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow stone-slingers against them.
Lastly, and on a personal note, I need motivation to write. The idea of blogging on my own seems daunting, like trying to write a novel. Too many days separate my last blog entry from my current one. Too many thoughts spoil my literary kitchen. Too many distractions exist in an already technolopolized world (to borrow from Postman). Writing, nowadays, has the invitation to being utterly exposed on the Internet. You were taught not to spew out just mere rambling (this is the traditional view of writing), but yet that sort of rambling is what has made blogging so accessible and popular (the contemporary view of writing). For someone with traditionalist leanings like me, blogging and Internet publishing has that kind of paradoxical hindrance. People might actually like your unfiltered thoughts. They might actually connect with you and write a response. And so the blogosphere turns.
On the whole, we need to write. And I need to write. So, help us write together in the midst of generational turmoil, neuroses, and angst. And writing our wrongs, we may just right them, Lord-willing.
