One of the things I love about speaking on Sunday morning is the instant feedback. People stand up during Community Sharing and say what they think, which is REALLY instant, or they come up to me after the platform service and offer a response.
Blogs aren't quite like that, I find. I don't get many comments on this blog, and I miss your voices! I have just changed a setting which should make commenting easier (you no longer need an account to leave a comment)...so please consider yourself very welcomed.
This makes me think about the value of talking to ourselves. A blog is meant to get your message or your ideas out to some unspecified audience, but it also provides a way to clarify your ideas for yourself. At least it does for me. I'm not a journaler, but I do find that I frequently discover what I think in the process of writing it down.
Actually, I think that's what prayer and meditation do for many people, too: offer a way to listen to yourself, to listen to what you are feeling really deeply, rather than what you're running around saying out loud or what is filling up your mind.
Can a blog be a spiritual practice? Leave a comment and let me know.
4 comments:
Hi Amanda,
I read your blogs all the time! I find them very interesting, thoughtful, funny and insightful! Keep up the good work! Also-I find talking to myself very comforting-sometimes I find I am the only one listening to me!!!
Anita :)
Amanda,
Around 4 years ago, after a rough break up from a long-term relationship, I joined a dating site. In the end I found that responding to all of the questions they posed was infinitely more valuable than meeting a couple of people through their service. Sorting through what I actually wanted in life was therapeutic and useful, whether or not it yielded the results I had initially joined for.
Hi Amanda. Don't discount us lurkers, we are following your blog, but we don't have any specific comment. What you say in your postings does spark thought and action, though. Remember, after a platform, you only get comments from a half dozen or so people during the formal comments period, and maybe twice that many (just a guess) informally during coffee hour. So, maybe 10% of the people in attendance? The other 90% of us are not unaffected. We may have been deeply moved, but need time to formulate our thoughts, or maybe someone else said what we wanted to say. If you want more active dialogue in the comments section, why not try posing a provocative question about some issue that touches us directly?
Thanks, everyone! And don't worry, I love the lurkers. I wasn't thinking specifically that there ought to be more comments (although I have gotten feedback that it's hard to make a comment, so I wanted to fix that). It was more a musing about what it means to talk to others and to ourselves, and the funny hybrid a blog offers!
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