Taking Off and Landing: Explorations in the Moral Life

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A Brief History of Writing Online

Back in 2004, there existed an account for a guy writing from his upstairs room on North 15th St. in Waco, Texas. This guy was unmarried, between seminary and doctoral work, working for hourly money at Barnes and Noble. The writing was fragmentary, mostly self-reflective, and free. There are occasional paid pieces that emerge from this era, but mostly, it’s a training ground of putting words out for public viewing. There is a very broad and very shallow focus. It is hungry, searching.

The site goes dark at the end of 2004, having generated over 200 posts in that year. It is hosted by a couple of other subsidiary sites, and all of the later pieces are lost in the digital graveyard.

There is nothing salvagable for anyone other than that guy from that period. There are no major epiphanies, no brilliant insights. There are many words, many listsicles, prosaic insights, vague intimations of romance.

Move forward 16 years, and this young man is older, has learned more, and writes better. Searching out the dusty paths of the Internet, he discovers the crypt where the 2004 blog has been laying dormant, waiting to be remembered. The name is recovered. The 218 posts are scattered on the floor and left.

Taking Off and Landing: A Genealogy

The title of that original blog, written from a dank upstairs room, was a phrase the younger man was always taken with. It comes from a Radiohead song, and signified (then) the desire to escape a futile coming and going, a taking off that inevitably landed, a beginning that always seemed to end. It was a way to hope for a world beyond spinning in circles. The title was a mantra to live in opposition to: now belongs to a small room in Waco, but not forever.

Now, the young man is turning 47. He is married, with children, a vocation, a life. The title sends a different signal. The phrase signifies not the need the need for exploration and return, but for what the moral life does: it explores, it seeks, it finds, and then it returns to put those findings into the earth to work.

For taking off cannot be all that what we do. There are only so many times that we can begin, or want to begin, before we desire for a place that knows us, and where we know its familiar traces. It is not the desire for routine which struck the older man, but the need to be bound to somewhere to return to: an Ithica which awaits after Troy has done its terrible work, a frail nest the creatures seeks out after flying out into the dusk for food.

And so, the wilderness becomes reoriented, given a new focus. For the wilderness lasts a long time, but is, in the largest possible scheme of things, a waypoint between home and home. Christian Ethics in the Wild becomes Taking Off and Landing.

What Changes? Not Much.

When I started this in 2021, I was very much an intrepid explorer, writing myself fully into a vocation. And now, in 2024, that vocation has found me in abundance. I hope that it will keep finding me for a long time. Over time, the circle of concerns here has tightened around a few key concerns:

1. The Dynamics of the Moral Life. Whether writing on the role of empathy, the synthetic vision of the Decalogue, or what virtues are, what the moral life is and how it works are always on the menu.

2. The Church Community. I have little interest in fighting denominational battles, as I assume that the bodies of Christ grow up in the soil in which God plants them. Understanding them, connecting their dots, and drawing in their manifold wisdom is my concern here.

3. The Moral Life In the World. The dynamics of the moral life are always seeking out, always hungry and inquiring. When I draw in Bruce Springsteen, material issues of migration, psychology, scarcity, or the intersections of the Psalms and desire, this is where the first and second concerns come together, as two wings of a plane which seeks, finds, and returns.

   **

   To engage in Christian moral reasoning is to venture out, but always asking what these explorations mean for the gathered community, and you never know what you find when you start looking.

We will still do book clubs¹. We’ll still do Oh No!, the occasional advice column. But the name change and explicit focus, tying together past and future, is a way to bring some cohesion to this project. It’s a way of making sure that when I write, Ithica is always on the horizon, the frail nest in view though the winds knock it out.

Once a week, everything is for everyone. And once a week, in general, the work will be for those who help support it with their small offerings. Nothing changes on that front, and however you read, I’ll make it worth it for you.

Thanks for reading, however long you have been, and however you do.

1. Next up is Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, done over the course of three months.