Categories: on-blogging
Date: 12 November 2008 12:05:00
Approaching my 1500 post mark I thought I'd take a look at aspects of blogging and possibly highlight some of, what I think are, my better posts. Today - the spiritual aspect.
Ok, is blogging spiritual? Well, blogging in itself isn't neccessarily, but it can be used as a spiritual tool or atleast a tool to reflect on our spirituality. For the professional view on the subject see http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2005/08/the_spiritualit.html (Tall Skinny Kiwi)*.
Over the last four years I've found blogging useful in the following ways which kind of fit in with the spiritual aspect:
1) For helping me articulate my journey in a way which has enabled me to look back and see what God is doing. This works to (i) facilitate praise and acknowledgement of the journey God is taking me on, (ii) realise that God has been there through the not so good times, (iii) identify that God is not taking me on my journey alone, rather I am taking that journey in community, intersecting with different people along the way.
2) Helping me to see the spirituality within secular art and politics. I can't quite explain it, but blogging about these things between blogging about explicitly God stuff has helped me fade the line between the sacred and the profane and between the secular and the spiritual. It's helped me see the whole as my life and God within the whole.
3) Giving me space to cry out to God in a creative way. Sometimes, particularly when I've gone off on a rant, it's given me space to say what's in my head and kind of worked in a way the Psalms did, (although I'm way less poetic - obviously). By that it means that I can articulate my joys and frustrations through blogging, screaming out to and thanking God along the way.
4) It's given me space outside the church to express myself about "God stuff" when I've needed. Within that the feedback I've gotten through the comments section has been really useful and enabled me to know I'm sharing in "fellowship" with other people going through similar stuff. When I was really on the edge of church it gave me space to think through the issues out loud and get useful support and feedback.
5) It's helped challenge me about my perceptions. Reading through other peoples posts has sometimes deeply challenged my opinions and beliefs, aswell as educating me about other faith communities, and denominations.
6) It's resourced me. Through what other people have posted I've found out about spiritual practices and authors, etc I wouldn't have done before.
7) It's developed my intercessory prayer and sparked more stuff for me to pray about, aswell as giving me the priviledge of praying for friends as they share the ups and downs of their journeys.
8) It's helped me to have the courage to dream dreams and to get nearer being the me God created me as. I've been able to blog what's been going on in my head and recieve encouragement, support and feedback from people.
* Apologies I've not learnt how to do links on the new system yet - (now that would have been a useful diagram Snail Snail).