Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

The Vocation of Christian Blogging

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 ‘The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.’
                                                                                     Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking


That quote always made me sad. Because for a couple of decades, my deep gladness lay in words, in reading and writing. Literature, and literary writing. And how could this possibly meet the world’s deep need?

And what about Christian writing? Well, I felt I needed to have experienced some of the things Jesus promised us–the bread which stills our hunger, the water which slakes our thirst, the peace which transcends understanding, light in our darkness, joy in spite of trouble–before I wrote about them.

And now, in my forties, over the last decade or so, I have tasted all these, not as a permanent settled condition, but in ever-increasing and deepening tastes, glimpses and experiences.
                                                                * * *


Of course, this hurdle–of not wanting to embark on writing about my faith until I was sure the writing would be a blessing–was a self-constructed one. A friend who was a mentor in my thirties, and who I used to show my spiritual journal to, found it hilarious, and thought it could speak to other people. “Publish your spiritual diary,” he’d urge. “Just be bitchy. Write psalms of the every day.”

Well, I haven’t been particularly bitchy in this blog. Maybe my forties have ironed it out of me–or perhaps my residual bitchiness will slowly emerge!
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Christian blogging offers us a place in which our deep gladness might meet the world’s deep need.

A difference between blogging and preaching is that there is no captive audience. A preacher has a captive trustful audience given to him/her by virtue of the theology degree and church position. As such, preachers often share the QED, the proof, without going into the working out of the theorem. Talk about things like trust, praising God anyway, forgiveness, love–without sharing the painful road, and the failures it took to get them where they are.

An entirely inspirational blog won’t ring entirely true. In general, we trust not the blog post, but the blogger. Trust is not had as a gift, but trust is earned, to paraphrase Yeats. Bloggers who are honest about their  lows, failures and sin, earn our belief when they share their mountain-top experiences, revelations and insights. When they attempt to inspire us. 
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A writing teacher of mine, Carol Bly describes “moral fiction” as the kind of writing which if read by someone contemplating suicide would make them decide not to kill themselves after all.


I bravely started this blog with the intention that the posts would be a blessing to anyone surfing the net in the sort of bored, empty, inspiration-seeking mood in which I used to surf it (a habit I believe I have broken once I realized that that was becoming my default way of dealing with emptiness and boredom.)
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I’ve realized that the only way I might be able to be a blessing to as small or as large a readership God might decide to give me is to continually, deliberately turn back to Christ who promised, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” John 7

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Well, if Jesus were a blogger, rather than an itinerant preacher, what kind of blog would he 
have?


1) It would be unique. It is recorded that people were amazed at his words because he did not teach as the scribes and Pharisees did.

 No man ever spoke the way this man does John 7:46

Thank you very much. And how can I be unique?

By being yourself. 

The more honest you are–the more unusual you are, the more fun you are. 

The more you are yourself, the more original you are.

Each person is unique like each snowflake, rose, fingerprint, zebra’s stripes, or the iris of an eye.

As we grow to utter honesty, we discover in the process–unique blogs.

2 It would be full of grace and truth. 

It would be honest. Honesty was apparently the trait Jesus most respected in people, and hypocrisy the trait he most abhorred.

3 It would be a blessing.There would be life in it, living waters


and nourishment–the bread of life.

4) Would Jesus spend time in gaining readers for his blog, or would he proceed on the “If you build it, they will come?” principle.

Hmm. Primarily, the latter. However, he did approach people–Matthew, Zaccheus, Peter and Andrew…

And the real-life friendships and relationships which grow out of blogging are one of its pleasures. 

If one invests time in blogging, it is perhaps only sensible and responsible to invest some time in finding readers for one’s blog.
                                                                           
Whatever is alive, grows. A healthy blog grows in terms of visitors, commentators, spots on blogrolls, and all the other measures of a blog’s success. 

And if it does not? Time to consider whether pursuing it is indeed God’s will, 

and if it is, 


then how you can change so that it would it be a growing, burgeoning blog. (This blog is growing, albeit very slowly, gaining a few new readers each week. I am, however, content with its rate of growth).


5) Jesus would not embark on or continue a blog without being sure that blogging was his Father’s will for him, what he was called to do. He would also seek to hear God’s voice on the frequency of his posts.

At the end of his life, Jesus informed his Father, “I have done the work you have given me to do.” Those must have been the most satisfying words ever said.

He would not spend too long on his blog, and all the interesting distractions to do with blogging.
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If I never write another book, I will be sad, so I have to be careful not to allow blogging to cut into my writing time. 

I need to maintain a balance between blogging–instant noodles, quick bread–and writing a good book, which is like
“a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth.”

6 A blog written by Jesus.

Wow. What would it be like?

It would be varied, like his teaching ministry, and use a variety of forms. Jesus used parables, exposition, sermons, exhortation, explication, allegory, straight teaching. He was funny. He even used satire.

He never spelled things out too much. He asked questions. He encouraged people to think. His parables could be interpreted in multiple ways. 

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 I am not Jesus, but I would like my blog to bear some resemblance to the blog a central figure in my spiritual, emotional, and thought-life might have written.

And how do I do that?

Oddly enough, it begins with slowing down. Spending more time with him–to catch his spirit. To have my soul filled with his living waters, with his bread of life. 


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  1. Thank you. I needed this today. Sometimes when you write Christian posts you feel pressure to the the “perfect Christian” and then when you fail you feel inadequate to write. I needed the reminder to just be true to myself and to my reader.

  4. Always good to be open and honest, it reflects the pesonality of the writer and offers a 'real' look at life. I like that in your blog, that is from the real you. I'd love to read Jesus' blog, I wonder how he'd handle the comments section too!
    redx

  5. Thanks so much, David. In blogging through Matthew, this year I realized that Jesus was far more edgy and far less nice than we conventionally conceive him to be!!
    Welcome, Adulcia. Yes, my blog posts too start with something I am trying to work out or am inspired by.

  6. Anita – thank you for taking the time to write this. It is valuable stuff.

    I ponder this from time to time and despite my normal comfort with finding words, cannot find the words that you so ably do in this instance.

    Do I agree with you? Mostly. I think that is Jesus were a blogger he would be edgy, challenging, admonishing – then nice. It seems to me that Jesus wasn't out to make friends, but more to convey his message through his ministry. Bloggers like to make friends, and we know how many people read us. I suspect Jesus wouldn't sign up for Wikio!

    I shall think about this lots today.

    Pax

  7. I've find I write mostly for myself – it's been helpful to write out what I'm going through, to sort through stray and random ideas into a coherent form. At the same time it has been helpful to some others who may be experiencing similar feelings (based on some of the feedback I've had).

  8. Hi Jen, I've been blogging for 11 months, and in the past used to sometimes blog because I had committed to do it every day. And because energy and time were short sometimes chose what was easy to write, rather than the more interesting thoughts which would take longer to sort out and process.

    You are right, it is a waste of time to write for the sake of writing. Better to give oneself and one's readers a break.

    Of course, now that I am attempting to blog through the Bible I always have something to think about, and hopefully to share.

    I suppose blogging is a challenge–surely something worth sharing must happen in the course of a day. God surely gives everyone several creative and interesting thoughts in the course of a day. The challenge is to discover the interest and verbalize them.

    Thanks so much for the blog roll add. You're on mine!

  9. Anita, A great spin on WWJD. Now it's WWJB: What Would Jesus Blog? Very thought-provoking. I think of this issue often, though hadn't articulated it to myself nearly as concisely. As a mom w/ 4 young ones in addition to many other responsibilities, I'm painfully aware that time is limited and I should use it wisely and well, and never write for the sake of writing, and only write what will be useful in some way.

    At the same time, I believe in the power of words as living, breathing things, just as Jesus was *the Word* made flesh. So working with words is indeed a godly pursuit and can indeed meet the world's deep hunger, for who hasn't been deeply touched or healed by a mere word?

    Write on!

  11. Great stuff, Anita! I haven't written books, but I am so grateful to have a place to write where people find what I write to be meaningful. Hooray for the internet!