Your Chance to Make History

I'm going to change the URL for this blog. While the title of this blog is "Speaking Frankly," you need to use my full name in the address bar to get here. You obviously know that or else you wouldn't be reading this.

I have decided to go quasi-anonymous. No, I'm not going to make a big deal about concealing my identity. I just want to make it harder to Google my name and find this blog. The reason? As I become more active in ministry or academic work, there may be a necessity to make (some of) my opinions and struggles private. I may submit items for publishing (both in music and writing) and may some day teach courses. Who knows.

I have wrestled with this a lot. I have built a solid record of advocating for openness through my life (I don't need any comments from the peanut gallery as to whether I have done a good job living up to my value of openness). I don't hold any false impressions that people in the public eye or positions of authority need to pretend they have perfectly clean records. In fact, it is more encouraging to know that they don't. Still, the impression remains in our society that those in that position are expected to act like they got their shit together.

My blue collar roots give me a solid bullshit detector, and it always sounds off when I hear that ministers in the Church are asked to keep their opinions to themselves, while the Church itself rams it's opinions down your throat. I understand that one individual does not make a church, but sometimes it seems like the Church may be resisting the cleansing light of openness and honesty. What are they afraid of?

But again, those are the kinds of opinions I need to keep to myself. How am I doing so far?

I do believe, though, that there is a time and a place for disclosing matters. It may (heavy emphasis on "may") be inappropriate to know your professor's opinions when taking his class. You don't need egomaniacs starting their little cults all over the place--I have seen that and it's not good. Part of being pastoral is respecting the people you are ministering to and not impressing on them (while they are in a vulnerable place, such as being a student or someone coming for spiritual direction) your own conclusions but rather helping them reach their own. That makes sense to me.

I still go back and forth on all this, because I think you can make a mature argument either way--just because you share your opinion doesn't mean you are ramming it down anyone's throat. Nevertheless, there is some consensus in the professional world on this, and it may behoove me to abide by it.

Besides, some of my friends think a person is a raging egomaniac to use their given name for a URL (to which I would say that you can make the same argument for having a blog at all, whether you use your name or not). I admit I have never been settled with it. I attribute this to my family--we aren't very showman-like and tend to downplay a lot of public attention and spotlights, unless there is a very good reason for that and your work deserves it. Spotlights are an upper and lower class phenomenon, not the value of blue collar workers and humble farmers. However, the name made the most sense . . . these are my thoughts, so it seems they already had a natural name: mine. Anything else just seemed to box me into something else.

So here is where you come in: I need some suggestions. Some little bastards already took the obvious ones, such as "speakingfrankly", "franklyspeaking" and "franktalk." None of these blogs have been updated since 2002, and 2 of the 3 were never used at all--someone just took the URL and held it. There needs to be a statute of limitations here.

Send your comments in quick before I give up this blog altogether. As you may have noticed, dear readers, I haven't been hanging around here that much, spending more attention on the Columbus Catholic Worker blog. Still, I'm far from throwing in the towel. The rumors of this blog's death have been greatly exaggerated.