Last week I was alerted by one of my blog readers that an error message had popped up when he tried to access the blog. Another reader sent me a message that they could not open the blog. A third friend reported that a strange message about the privacy setting on the blog had popped up, and they were afraid to proceed.

We took it down.

It was one of those IT blips that probably pointed to a troll or a hacker or some other cyber-stalker with nefarious intent and, instead of spending hours and hours trying to fix it, we just shut it down, archived the old material and changed all of my passwords. (The IT folks did do a deeper dive, later, to discover the genesis of the problem, but for someone like me who just generates content, and doesn’t dwell in the process or finer points of message delivery systems, the outcome of their work was beyond my ken.)

So, we’re making lemonade out of the sour lemon that was last week’s IT hassle. We are beginning a new blog.

This is a good time to do this “re-freshing” for a couple of reasons: We are about to launch our new website and the new blog will be consonant with the new “look” and “branding” that has been designed for us. The new blog will be more fully integrated into our spectrum of diocesan communications. Also, the name of the old blog was long and cumbersome; this gives us a chance to change it. And- the best part: At this juncture, it seems appropriate to ask for your input about subjects that you’d like to see covered.

• What do you want to know more about?
• What do you wonder about, as a person of faith, as an Episcopalian, as, maybe, a person of no faith or affiliation?
• What do you want to know about the Church? Or about Jesus?
• What does your spiritual self need to grow, develop, expand, deepen?

Here’s what I can promise you:

• A mostly regular (except when I’m traveling) Friday morning commnuiqué
• The same directness and honesty that I think I’ve offered in the past blogs that I’ve written
• An answer to every (civil) comment that is made
• No pictures of food from my kitchen (I have another blog for that.)
• A weekly piece that is based on my experience first, as a Child of God, and then, as an ordained person of more than a few years and a bishop who serves the Church.

Here’s what I can’t promise you:

• Perfect punctuation or grammar
• Super- learnéd disserations on theological subjects
• A candy-coated picture of the Christian Way and/or Church

So, I’m glad you’re here.

I’d like to call this blog “On the Way” since we are not new to each other, really, this isn’t our beginning, and we’ve not yet arrived at our journey’s end. We are “On the Way.”

One of my favorite stories from Scripture is the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) in which two bewildered disciples make their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus and share stories On the Way. They’re still reeling from the death of their Jesus and are a little untethered. But they have each other. And they have a stranger who joins them, to walk with them On the Way. It is Jesus, of course, but they have not yet opened their eyes to see him. Later, at table, they finally recognize him at the breaking of the bread, and then it dawns on them that he had been with them all along, as they walked along the road. I love that story. I love that in it, we learn that Jesus is always with us, whether we can see him or not. I love that it is at table that they finally see him. I love that they are out on a walk when he comes upon them. And I love that he patiently breaks open the scriptures to them as they journey together. It is a rich and wonderful story that treats with some gentleness, the shortcomings that each of us experience as mere mortals (I like to think that when Jesus tells them that they are “foolish” (vs. 25) that he is talking under his breath…) And most of all, I like that it shows that the power of the resurrection is intimate and accessible.

Well. That’s enough for one week.

Welcome to On the Way.

And please, share what you would like to hear. Email me at ascanlan@diocesecpa.org, send me a Face Book message or post your reply here, in the comment section.