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Weblogging

Pride of acquaintanceship

I wanted to point out a wonderful cross-blog between Mike Golby and Jonathon Delacour. Mike is starting a series of weblog postings on how he has re-affirmed his own religious beliefs, as well as gained appreciation for others. This is in response to a posting Jonathon did on his loss of faith.

In his posting, Mike said:

    • That said, let’s get stuck into Jung, his meeting with the Pueblo and perhaps, sometime in the next week or so, Jonathon’s sad and desperate plight.

My take on this was that Mike was using humor, primarily because I believe that he and Jonathon have a deep and abiding respect for each other. This was confirmed by Jonathon’s reaction, if his response is anything to go by:

    • I can imagine other people might be affronted by Mike’s referring to their “sad and desperate plight.” There’s no shortage of thin-skinned inhabitants in Blogville. But not this little brown duck. I’m curious. Anyway, if I choose to become upset and reject Mike’s observation out of hand, I’m giving up the opportunity to learn something about myself. Mike may be correct, or he may be mistaken. I trust my own ability to decide. Either way I win.

Little brown duck. I loved that.

I hope I don’t sound condescending or maudlin when I say how proud I am to share weblogging space with you two. I learn from you both. At least — I hope to learn from you. Mike, Jonathon, you all aren’t going to get nasty with each other on me and ruin my poor, naive, innocent trust in you both, are you? I’ll shed tears. Real ones. Salty, even. Buckets and buckets of salty tears, and red-rimmed green eyes. What a picture that makes.

Other than pointing out what looks to be a particularly good set of weblog postings for the next week or so, I also wanted to mention this interchange for another reason — as a lead in to an apology.

Mike Sanders, I should not have mentioned your request to drop mutual weblog links this morning. That’s not the issue. What you say in your weblog posting of today is of issue, and I should have responded to that, rather than the personal interchange. My apologies for making your request public and and then responding to it within a public forum.

This morning, I forgot the first rule one must hold when communicating with another — show respect for yourself if you can’t respect what the other person is saying, and react to the words, not the person; to do otherwise, demeans youself, not them.

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