David McElroy

As I locked the door of my office to drive home Monday, the parking lot was deserted and quiet. It was only 7 p.m., but the last light of sunset was almost completely gone.

Something in the air felt different tonight.

It was getting dark a little bit earlier. I noticed flashes of lightning in the distance. And then it hit me. There’s always a moment in the early autumn when the air feels different and I know change is almost here.

Autumn is coming. It’s not here yet, but it’s coming. I feel it.

For years, this annual moment has been evidence that nature’s wheel is still turning, just as it always has. The wheel has oriented us for months to the growth and the green of summer and it’s about to push us to the beautiful harvest time — a time of reds and golds and browns — that comes just before nature goes dormant until time for another rebirth.

This almost imperceptible feeling in the air always gives me comfort. It reassures me that everything that’s happened for many millennia before I was born is still happening.

As I’ve gotten older, it’s also felt like evidence that nature is marking off another year for me — claiming just a bit more of the life I was granted when I was born many years ago.

Nothing about this felt frightening. Everything felt normal. Everything was as it should be. I was where I should be. Something much larger than me was in control.

Despite all of man’s efforts to control nature — to control our environment — nature was still in control. The return of this feeling lets me know once again that the God of nature is still supreme.

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If you know the story of this website, you probably know that I started writing for an audience that was obsessed with politics. Over the years, I have almost completely rejected addressing the partisan political world — for reasons that I’ve explained before.

In the last couple of years, I have increasingly focused more narrowly on the question of how people who see the world as I do can (and should) live in a culture which has completely abandoned us. As I’ve grown more confident about precisely the things I want to express, I’ve realized that I don’t know how to reach the people who need and want to connect with the ideas I’m expressing.

As a result, I recently commissioned a market study to look at what I’m writing and tell me how best to connect with people who should be the natural audience for my ideas. I’m not allowed to disclose the identity of the firm that did the analysis, but I can say it’s a major West Coast firm that many of you have heard of.

I realize that this won’t be especially interesting to many people who simply want to read the articles and move on, but I thought it would be interesting enough for a small subset of you to reproduce the executive summary of the report here.

I should point out that the notes included with the study suggested that its use of the term “Christian” here shouldn’t be interpreted in its strict theological sense, because the research said that many of the people included in the category would be people who have a broad Christian worldview — as expressed in a broader western philosophy — not just those who would claim overtly Christian theological beliefs or practices.

I just received the study Friday and I’m still studying the details, but it feels validating so far to see that a third party firm sees a viable niche readership for the things I’m writing about. The question remains about how to specifically reach potential readers who have no reason to ever realize that this website exists.

With all that said, if you’re interested, keep reading to dive in to the executive summary of a report that I’ll be contemplating (and hopefully acting on) as I go forward.

As always, I do appreciate the thousands of you who read my work regularly. I never take you for granted. Keep Reading

I want to tell everybody to shut up. It’s not personal, though.

I don’t know whether to shout or whisper. It doesn’t really matter, because it’s an entire culture that I want to be quiet, not this person or that person.

I’m not angry with anybody. There’s nobody in particular who I want to shut up. It’s chaotic voices and public background music and blaring televisions. But it’s visual “noise,” too. It’s flickering screens of all kinds. It’s beeping phones and computers and mobile devices. It’s constant notifications.

It’s a culture that demands my attention and won’t leave me alone.

When I’m honest with myself, though, I realize that I’m the problem. I have the ability to shut this cacophony off at any time. But I refuse to take control of my life and my environment. I think I can be the master of my media culture.

I’m so addicted to what has come to seem normal that I’m like an alcoholic who thinks he can have just one drink. Or maybe two.

But in the rare moments when I can listen to my own spirit, I know I’m making this way too complicated. It’s not about the noise and the screens and the notifications.

It’s about silence. I desperately need to find silence for my heart and my mind — so I can hear the still small voice that whispers truth and love and wisdom when I’m quiet enough to hear it.

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