To those that used to read this blog, many years ago, you might be wondering why the many years long absence since my last post (2018). Quite simply, life got in the way, and my motivation dried up. Moreover, when the COVID-19 Pandemic stopped the world and confined us all inside for many months, the original intent of this blog, where I reviewed Pittsburgh restaurants and quipped about life lessons from my readings and experiences stopped too. I found myself with no restaurants to visit and fewer experiences to share that I felt worthwhile. And while it was also a period of self-discovery for me, as it was for many people, I still did not feel compelled to share anything in the same means I had previously. I felt unmotivated to review restaurants, the limited ones I would visit, and my experiences and learnings, at one point ones I felt compelled to share, now seemed tired, unoriginal, and frankly, boring.
I’ve considered returning numerous times to this blog, but the timing never seemed right, and the theming was always in question. I’ve wanted to share a host of opinions, stories, readings, and supplications, but I’ve never wanted to come off as unoriginal or as virtue signaling.
The impetuous for this rebrand, and my desire to write again, has been the election of Donald Trump to the Office of the Presidency for the second time, and with it, the hate, stupidity, and violence that have come from his administration and his supporters.
Let me be clear: I don’t believe I can more eloquently or forcefully speak out against the president and his conies than most. Thousands of activists, professors, career civil servants, theologians, media and movie stars, and many more have or will convey my outrage and indignation better than I ever could. Yet I find myself, for better or worse, wanting to join my voice with theirs and say something, anything, about what I feel are dangerous times. I want to take some action, have some control over what’s happening, and I still feel that the pen is mightier than the sword.
And so if you’ve come this far, you’ll at least know why I’ve been away and why I’ve come back. But what exactly am I going to do? And what is A Higher Calling?
A higher calling is typically conveyed as a purpose that one is drawn or compelled to that is greater than oneself, sometimes in a secular sense like a more fulfilling job, and sometimes in spiritual sense such as serving a higher power. When I was mulling over ideas for how to return and write about things that mattered to me, I fell back on my experiences and attitudes toward politics, philosophy, and religion. In my own life, these ideas attitudes were adopted through the lenses of centrism, stoicism, and Christianity. And it is through these lenses that I will try and see what we can all do to reach a higher calling.
It took a lot of parsing through ideas to even get to the point that I would feel comfortable sharing what I’ve learned. I now not only need convey what I believe about these 3 concepts, but also need to demonstrate how they can be put into practice and work against the current totalitarian regime. Treating both the concepts and the target with the seriousness they deserve is of utmost importance; it is only by downplaying either the role that centrism, stoicism, and Christianity have in defeating the administration’s dangerous ideas, or the severity of the threat that our democracy is under, that I will have failed to hit the mark.
I hope that if you haven’t been deterred yet, that you will give this blog one more chance, that you will trust me to elucidate ideas that are necessary and good to the preservation of the United States, and to our understanding of morality and love. Few things could be more important.