I do not do much bloggy self-reflection on the presence or meaning of this site, not much beyond my anniversary posts.  But today a milestone has been reached and should be mentioned.  The last post below was the 1000th on this blog.  As regular readers know, I have fallen behind in the past few months on my daily posting.  Yet even with a bit of slacking off, 1000 seems like something to claim.  It has not yet been three years (that will be marked on July 1st), and getting to 1000 today feels like some sort of accomplishment.

    For fun, I just went back to the very first post, which briefly describes my interest in starting this blog.  Here is one graf that summarizes things:

That interest is linked to my personal
experience.  When my son, Aidan, was born profoundly disabled, my world
was turned upside down.  I wrote a book about it: Aidan's Way,
in which I call upon Taoist philosophy (the Tao Te Ching and Chuang
Tzu) to understand the meaning of his life.  I am very much aware of
the danger of descending into vacuous, new age-y, orientalist cant –
and I try to keep it straight.  My purpose is not to reveal the
"mysteries of the East" to confused Western moderns.  Rather, I think
that the classic texts can be taken seriously and, with obvious
recognition of vastly different historical circumstances, applied to questions of our day.  That is what I will try to do here, for the most
part.

     I will let you determine the extent to which I have succeeded in avoiding "vacuous, new-agey ,orientalist cant…"   But it is right and proper that I remember Aidan, who inspires me in so many ways.   The various posts I have written about him over the years can be found here.  

      Thanks for reading and commenting.