The Ziklag Almost Daily 1.22.24

Beauty, Wisdom and Grace

Over a week ago I sat poised to make swift weekend update to you wonderful paying subscribers, in preparation for a week of retreat, work and report at the annual Lutheran Theological Symposia in Fort Wayne, Indiana. But then I never sent it because, well…I got on the road.

The event is something of a who’s who of LC-MS confessional networking, and this year did not disappoint. Along with a good hour unexpectedly alone in a cigar lounge in excellent conversation with Matthew Harrison, I also met and conversed with ambassadors from the Lutheran Church in Australia, from Luther Classical College in Wyoming, and from a new mission plant in South Carolina, just to name a few.

What fell apart was all disciplined study and writing. (That’s not entirely true, but I surely didn’t get to the dailies!)

What are the dailies anyway? What is this place? It’s where

Jonathan McAdam Fisk

shows you his writing while he is writing it. Why? Because I may never publish it otherwise.

While the Luhmann Method of Smart Noting didn’t cure me of writing books, it did cure me of writing books for publication, at least, in part. I realized today that in my notes that I am archiving into the dusty depths of somewhere for someone else to discover and deal with after I die, there are no less than 12 fully formed books in outlined and notated form, maybe more.

They may not be particularly good books, but they were good for me at the time. I haven’t read them again, nor tried to polish them up, because that’s not why I wrote them. I wrote them in order to learn.

I would learn more by re-writing them one more time for you. With every single one, the old college try and a few months, and I’d have something as good as Talk Them Into It is in its current “super” draft status.

But I can’t do that for all of them, and I don’t seem to want to do that for any of them enough to do it. Instead, I’m archiving them to move on and write something new as I study something else.

This is a major shift in my approach to productivity since 2020, and I have the Luhmann Method to thank for it. I recently also received a nice note from one of you lauding my Smart Intro Series as a great asset to his sermon preparations. Don’t I know it! It’s certainly something I still plan to keep swinging round on, and one day maybe there will be a publishable work. But there will be almost daily smart note review that I’m doing, along with daily maxims and red letters, Earth, Edgar, Jak, Sun Tzu and more.

I’m not holding back for the peanuts. I’m just having the time of my life on the adventure of a lifetime founding a school, raising a few geniuses (semi-adopted and otherwise), and loving work in the parish like never before.

Are you with me on this ride? I sure hope so.

Until they pull the power out,

Jonathan McAdam Fisk

is not going anywhere.

Maybe more tomorrow,

📐🦋Almost Daily Maxim

There is a loyalty is superior to fraternity: proximity. cf. Pr. 27:10

📐🦄Almost Daily Red Letters

If God is your Father, what does that make you? cf Mt. 5:48