HELLO!

Today is my 2400^th consecutive daily blog. I have not missed a day since I wrote my very first one March 20^th 2020, the beginning of our collective COVID experience. I remember the feeling and epiphany that led to this daily ritual and discipline. The Executive Board and staff at Bethany United Church sat in chairs as a large circle, six feet apart, to discuss what would be our initial plan moving forward as we entered the uncharted territory of a global pandemic. There would be recorded services, we were not yet set up for livestreaming. Our offices would be closed, all rentals suspended, staff would work from home. The question that weighed on my mind, how could I help? I had colleagues who wrote weekly or monthly blogs, but I wondered if I could write a daily one. I would also be calling people, as it turned out I would make 15 calls a day. With permission, I could share stories, my story, others’ stories, how we were managing to make sense of this strange experience.

What was surprising to me were the number of people in the church who asked me to include in the list of email addresses, their friends, others in their apartment building, in some cases congregations in rural areas who heard about my blog when I wrote a column in the Halifax Herald about my experience as a blogger. Kim would walk by the room where I wrote my blog and ask, “does anyone read them?” Later, when she saw they were a full page, she added, “does anyone read the whole thing?” My response, “I don’t know, but it is cathartic for me to write these”.

After all the lockdowns ended and life returned to something like “normal” many of those who were receiving the blogs asked to have their addresses deleted, “I loved to read them, they were a big part of my daily ritual when I was confined to home, but now that I am free to move about, it has become just another email I don’t read”. Fair enough. I asked the church if they wanted me to continue, and many did. I carried on until I left Bethany in June 2024. I asked the Woodlawn United Church 500 household email addresses if they wanted to receive the daily blog, 100 did and another 30 people contacted the office asking to have their addresses included as well. One day I was at a coffee shop with Kim, a woman and her daughter bought us coffee and told me she was a subscriber of my blog. I didn’t know her. She heard about it from a friend.

My blog has 130 subscribers, not a lot if you compare it with some of the blogs I read. But no matter, it is a deep honour to me that so many find these reflections to be of some value. I try to mix up the content, spirituality, Biblical commentary, cultural changes, some are prophetic, some are personal, some are about me, some about others, some are about nature. I try never to “state the obvious”. To those who read to the end of my blogs, thank you. Kim will be surprised. Peace, Kevin