I was looking down the list of esteemed bloggers that grace the side of my own posts. I am glad that they are there, and they are there because I chose them deliberately.
In the same twenty-four hour period, two things happened. The first was that it dawned on me that I hadn't added to that number (or subtracted as it is right to do from time to time when blogs fall fallow). The second was the discovery of a blog that made a considerable impact on me, and caused me to notice something that has been been missing (save for a couple of salient exceptions) from the "notes" that comprise the "chord" of my blogroll!
The very nature of blogging in the present is that it tends to err towards response to issues and situations that come up in the world. Some are more adversarial or didactic than others, while some lean in the direction of self-counselling. That is a very nature of the beast. What seems to be lacking more and more, in my opinion, is a blog that attends to the spiritual dimension in a more conspicuous way. When discovering such a blog, only then do I realise what I am missing.
The blog in question is iBenedictines. I found my way to this site after its author, Digitalnun, "followed" me on Twitter. I read it and found peace. Simple. I realised very quickly that an instinct that I once had (and caused me to start the now fallow and wholly spiritual Flight Diaries) is that blogging is an increasingly un-spiritual affair (save for the motivation of its writers, of which I offer no criticism in that regard). My own blog is a case in point - and if you trawl for overtly spiritual posts, you would be hard pressed to find many.
Accepting that I am what I am, and I write as I write, I am not proposing a substantive change in the style or content of this (nearly) award winning act of near perfection. Rather, like all good journals and magazines, I am going to add a few more blogs whose eyes are altogether more fixed on the face of Christ rather than the outpourings of the world's media. We need all of it, but we need all of it! Well, I certainly need a valuable boost to my Spiritual Blog Quotient, even if you don't!
Thank you to Digitalnun and the Sisters in West Oxfordshire for teaching me a lesson about need. To the rest of you (who may not have found iBenedictines) - follow and read earnestly. You will be glad you did.
I have noticed that a lot of Christian blogging is surprisingly non-spiritual and focuses instead on the church as an institution. This is a shame because there is a thirst out there for spiritual insight.
ReplyDeleteThank you for highlighting iBenedictines.
Point taken!
ReplyDeleteSpirituality is very personal. Which is why I tend not to blog about it. But I do reflect on things from time to time. However part of the point of my blog was to provide a place for musings on the shape of church as well as the content of faith.
ReplyDeleteI so agree with you about iBenedictines - really high quality spiritual stuff there. I'm sure this is because it emerges from a life of prayer. I don't see anything wrong with blogging in reaction to "the outpourings of the world's media" but perhaps we Christians need to be praying more to see this with the eyes of Christ and to pray more intentionally about what we put in our blogs. Also is there's a danger of making a false distinction between 'spiritual' and 'not spiritual'?
ReplyDeleteI offer no criticism of the blogging style that I too inhabit. All I hope I advocating is a sense, inwardly or outwardly, that our invective (or whatever pours forth) is balanced by a sense or quality of prayer.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nancy regarding the distinction between spirituality or lack - as I believe that all the blogs (on my roll at least) nurture spirituality in one form or another. This is post about balance, mostly!
In my blogging I take care not to stray into the arena of preaching because I am neither qualified nor a scholar of theology. I am careful to blog on either societal responses or my own personal response to a Christian event or to take a personal Christian view of a secular event. Could other lay bloggers be thinking the same way?
ReplyDelete