Why subscribe?

I’m an old school blogger, stubbornly so.

Web-logs, back in tha day, were a way of journalling publicly, of sharing your thoughts with the world. Not “thoughts microtargeted to maximize your blogging ROI.” Not “building and reinforcing your brand identity.” It had nothing to do with income. Instead, it was whatever you happened to be thinking about, or want to write about.

I like that. That feels free, and human, as much of the pre-enpoopification internet felt.

So I write regularly about my Christian faith, and about politics, and about anything I want. Sometimes, you’ll get poems. Sometimes, reflections on gardening or life in general. Or things my dog did that amuse me.

I’m a person, not a brand, dagnabbit.

If you’d like to dive in to my storytelling, take a look at the Sloppy Beta Books section of this Substack. There you’ll find short stories and novel manuscripts that haven’t received any love from publishers, and that I share simply because I like them.

Read at your leisure, and with my gratitude for your engagement.

Or maybe you love small churches as much as I do, and you’d like to hear the stories of folks who’ve discovered we follow Jesus best in human-scale and intimate communities. If that’s your thing, you’re welcome to listen in and subscribe to The Tiny Gospel Radio Hour.

Truth be told, the primary portion of this Substack mostly just directs you over to my blog, which is…after more than twenty years…still chugging along over at Blogger. That’s all this does. I’d be fine with you just subscribing there via RSS.

But maybe you don’t have an old-school Real Simple Syndication Feedreader. Maybe you’d prefer to get every post via email. Subscribe, and you will.

How much will this cost, you say?

The blogging? Nothing. Not a danged thing.

As I mentioned before, I’m an old school blogger, stubbornly so.

If You Want to Talk to the Manager.

I don’t have a comments section. Back when the internet was young and its heart was an open book, we used to think Comments were great. “We’re building community! We’re platforming constructive dialogue!” Oh, but we were so naive.

Comments are where decency and kindness go to die, where we treat others like objects and parrot the memed thoughts that have replaced our own personhood, where we posture and preen for all the world to see. I talk religion and politics on the regular, and y’all gonna start getting into it if I have comments, and this is is my house. So. No comments for you.

I also spend no meaningful time on Substack, nor do I want to. It’s social media now, after all, with all of the grasping algorithmic pathology that has poisoned so much of human relating, and I don’t do social media. Add in that Substack’s a sidegig filled with the sweet saccharine dreams of Mammonist Marketeering, and it honestly gives me the heebie jeebies. You do you and all, but Lord have mercy, am I done with that.

That said, maybe you want to tell me something. Maybe something stirred you. Maybe you just want to chat. I’m at belovedspear at gmail dot com. Feel free to reach out.

To learn more about the tech platform that powers this publication, visit Substack.com.