I suppose the mission statement for this blog is simply to share the fruit - the fruit of grace, the fruit of faith, the fruit of pondering and musing over life's experience as I procrastinate on more pressing daily tasks. I can't really say the fruit of wisdom, for I don't consider myself a wise person. And in the unfortunate event that something I say is interpreted as wise, all I can say is that wisdom only derives from God's grace. That is, wisdom, like whatever veritable nonsense I'm bound to disseminate, is the produce of a source and not the source of produce.
A little about myself: I'm a guy in his early twenties with an impractical B.A. in religious studies and am about to begin an even more impractical M.A. in biblical studies. Why? Because I love learning about Sacred Scripture, especially from an academic perspective. I don't believe faith and reason are in competition. The same goes for historical/literary/anthropological-criticism of the Bible and scripture's inherent sanctity. There's room and proper place for both. I'm also Catholic and love being Catholic. That being said, I'm not a fundamentalist, or a "Jesus-freak," or very evangelical by nature. I don't like extremism of any kind: religious, political, ideological. One might say I'm lukewarm. I wouldn't disagree, but it's not an admirable quality of mine. I just hope I don't get spat out like a Laodicean cherry pit.
It is possible that the title, "Sharing the Fruit" may get interpreted as an allusion to an incident in Genesis in which one person shared some fruit with another in the Garden of Eden. This episode in the narrative was part of a chain of events which allegorically explain the fall of humanity. So will the fruit of this blog do likewise? Ha! I should be so lucky (and burdened) to wield half as much influence in the world. These are just my thoughts. Take them or leave them for what they are. I'm not speaking ex cathedra, folks. Here's my disclaimer: I'm not trying to speak with authority, so any heretic-hunter out there can put his/her pitchfork down.
