Two particular inspirations led me--a confirmed blogosphere lurker--to begin this blog late last month. First, I was inspired by Rebecca Blood's essay, Weblogs, A History and Perspective. In her essay, Blood describes how, by writing in her blog, she "discovered her own interests," learning that they were different from the interests she'd thought were most important to her. She asserts that bloggers can become more confident, adventurous writers and, over time, can increase their trust in their own perspectives. What appealing possibilities! Who could resist?

Second, my near-daily forays into the blogosphere have reminded me of nothing more than a description in Rudyard Kipling's "Kim" of India's Great Trunk Road. The Road is a long-distance route traveled, in Kipling's time, by as wide a diversity of humanity as you could find anywhere, from royalty to peasants--everyone interacting and traveling in each other's company in the same general direction. When I first read Kim, it was easy to imagine entering into the great human river--how much fun it would be to set out towards the horizon along that road. Joining the blogging community doesn't seem so completely different, in principle...

And why did I call this blog "Beginner's Mind"? First, because that Zen idea of the beginner, who maintains an openness to other perspectives and experiences, is one I'm trying to cultivate in myself. Second, because in midlife and mid-career, I have deliberately become a beginner. During the last year and a half, I have left a stable and secure career to return to graduate school, sold a house and nearly all my possessions, and ended my membership in a liberal Protestant congregation in order to explore other spiritual paths, especially the contemplative traditions of the East. Let's see how it all turns out.