(Post by Roy Mathias)

The Oxfordshire village of Waterperry is home to Rowan Atkinson and the 8 acre Waterperry gardens.  We visited the latter.

 

New leaves with rain from earlier in the day:

Waterperry holds the national collection of saxifrages. There were well over a hundred labelled specimens in flower.

Today marks 3 years of blogging.

I have enjoyed it, absolutely, and am glad I started.

     Benefits?

1 It has taught me to write easily, confidently and rapidly, which will be a blessing as I return to “real” writing. My memoir Up to the Hills, will be published next April by Prodigal Press.

2 It’s enlarged my world. I have met several bloggers and blog readers, some of whom have become good friends.  And my cyber-friendships with commentators and blog readers has enriched and broadened my life. Blogging is a tremendous vehicle of growth.

3 Reading other blogs has changed me. I have been stretched by the can-do attitude and practical suggestions of Michael Hyatt.

From Donald Miller, I have learned about inciting incidents, and have created one of my own, an 11 mile a day pilgrimage in Tuscany.

From Jeff Goins, I have learned that writing every day makes it effortless. From Leo Babuata, that the way to major life changes is to make minuscule changes. And from Ann Voskamp that thanking God through the day changes everything. Reading beautifully written blogs, Sarah Bessey’s among them, enriches my life.

4 Blogging has taught me the pleasures of thinking deeply, and thinking things through. I have become braver and more confident about expressing my opinion, even when pushback is certain.

This has helped me grow as a person, and become more reflective. Reflective considered living and blogging has immense psychological benefits.

5 I definitely feel more alive and happy when I am blogging. When we take the kids to a cathedral, museum, botanical garden or a mountain hike, we suggest that they take cameras. Photographing beauty slows them down and they see it better.

For me, writing about my travels, my life, my ideas, my spiritual journey has the same function.

Blogging has slowed me down in good ways, and made me more reflective. The spiritual life begins when we slow down.

I am calmer, and have a more settled faith having worked out questions, querulousness, anger, and disagreements with my faith community on my blog over the last few years. I am far less likely now to write controversial posts!

6 A spiritual blog flows out of a spiritual life. When I am dry and have nothing much to write about I know it is time to repent and return.

7 If you blog with an open mind, reading other faith bloggers, and considering what they write, you will become more liberal. Without thinking too much about it, I assumed homosexuality was a sin around the time I started blogging in 2010. I have evolved. I have moved from a rather loosely held belief in inerrancy to a belief in the divine inspiration of scripture (though it is deeply precious to me, either way). Interrogating my faith, ironically, has led to it becoming deeper and more joy-giving

8 Self-confidence and stability—Blogging every day for three years has had a stabilizing influence on my life. Persisting in blogging every day has brought about confidence in my ability to write quickly (and, sometimes well). The confidence and discipline has spilled over into other areas. My house is tidier; I wake earlier; I have adopted a daily exercise habit of a 4-5 mile walk, and am losing weight—11 pounds since November!

9 Blogging frees me from the fear of criticism and the desire for approval. Some posts you know will evoke pushback or hostility and it’s freeing to write them anyway, and blow off the criticism. My own rule of thumb is I blow off all ad hominem comments, and delete them. Disagreement with ideas is fine, but when I realize both my views and my interlocuter’s are entrenched, I agree to disagree and “fade” –stop engaging.

10 Gratitude—Every year of blogging is better than the year before. You have more readers so what you write gets leveraged. Blog friendships increase in number and depth. As thinking “blogly” becomes a habit, you see blog ideas everywhere.

My blog has more than doubled since last year, largely due to being more active on Twitter.

I am grateful for my archive. I often return to it, and rethink, refine and reshare a post.

     New Directions

1) I needed a metric to gauge whether my blog is healthy and growing. I had used page views, on the philosophy that whatever is alive grows.

However, this intriguing article in the New York Times suggests that when we are helping other people, we are far more motivated to work, and work hard.

So I may try summarizing particularly helpful books, articles and blogs on my blog, and choose topics to explore depending on how useful they might be to my readers.

2 I read blogs widely, mainly on my facebook or my iPhone, but rarely comment (laziness and rushing and because I read blogs when I am procrastinating writing). I am trying to comment more.

3 I have got into the habit of thinking in 800-1000 words. I would LOVE to get into the habit of thinking in 400-500 words to conserve time and energy.

4 I would love to do more Scripture blogging—and in fact, my Scripture posts land up being evergreen posts, thanks to Google.

5 Other evergreen posts are those I post on my travels. I am growing increasingly interested in doing more travel writing on my blog.

6 I tend to write about subjects I know (or think I know). I would like to use my blog to explore things I do not know, ask questions, think through new subjects, and use my blog as a vehicle of growth.

7 “Love is little. Love is low. Love will make my spirit grow,” goes the Shaker spiritual.

When stuck, I would like to blog “little” and “low.” Be real, not even think about “killer” posts (in any sense of the word), but just blog about the new things I’ve learned, the little thoughts, the little insights, the little experiences of my life. “If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I don’t feel my blog has fully grown up, fully decided what it’s going to be and do once it’s all grown up, but it is enjoying growing up, and I am enjoying growing with it!

And thank you for reading and commenting!

And here are my most read posts of all time:

1 When Christian leaders stumble, the proper response is mourning.

2 The Parable of the Bridge, or when to say no to insistent people.

3 On Vaughan Roberts’ interview, and the case for gay Christian marriage.

4 In which angels sing and diamonds materialize: The Revival Alliance in Birmingham

5 Simon Ponsonby’s Butcher Sermon

6 Christians, quit being so oppositional

7 Why I am no longer a Catholic

8 When your theology makes you cry, your theology is too small

9 Why God is Profoundly Egalitarian and Why we Need More Female Clergy

10 So, is God to be found at the bottom of a laundry basket?

11 In which I trace my evolving views on gay Christians

12 Blogocracy—100 Influential Christian bloggers, as measured by Facebook followers

Do you blog? What do you love/hate about it? If you don’t, would you like to start?

At Easter time wild flowers are everywhere on Corfu — road sides, walls, abandoned lots …  The first half are from slopes of Mt. Pandokrater, in the North East of Corfu.  Many of the spring bulbs we know and love originated in the rocky hills of Greece and Turkey, and it is exciting to see them in the wild.  To see a larger version of the image right click and choose the appropriate option.

 

The olive grove we walked through was very fragrant, and we recognised a few familiar herbs, mint sage, and thyme.  There were probably a lot of others known to the locals.

 

The flowers pictured above are all from a wonderful olive grove. on the seaward side of Mt. Pandkrater.

Here are some flowers from the rest of Corfu.

 

 

 

Lovely purple flowers on a Judas tree by the road.

 

 

With Corfu’s mild climate, gardens are full of fruit trees.

code: E8PCC7EPSZVE

We hiked up Corfu’s tallest mountain, Mount Pandokrater today—not to the summit, sadly, but still an enchanted hike.

I was astonished to see so many of the bulbs which I’ve bought for my gardens just growing wild—stands of beautiful wild isis, muscari and chionodoxia.

Lots of sage and thyme a wonderfully fragrant wild mint.

What an amazing micro-ecosystem! Massive cactus growing side by side with olive trees, a smorgasbord of wild flowers, and delicate spring bulbs.

 

 

 

 

I had read how criminals visit the Great Smokies National Park, and leave with trucks of rare wild orchids which they sell on for $20-40 each. Well, there were thousands of pounds of bulbs growing wild here—nature’s beneficence!

I read yesterday how a family survived at the edge of the taiga in Siberia for decades off berries and bark, unaware that World War II had happened. Even there in that frozen climate nature apparently offered them enough to just about survive. The world is charged with the goodness of God!

Flowers grew out of rocks, abundance and goodness even in the most unpromising times and environments.

A healthy theology methinks is best worked out in the sun, and fresh air, in God’s creation, your muscles sweaty from hard work, or hard walking. Ora et labora. Prayer needs some work, or some walking to ground it. Saint Benedict got it right again.

Mirtiotissa  beach, described by Lawerence Durrell as the most beautiful in the world, is certainly one of the most inaccessible on Corfu. Until recently, it was accessible only by a footpath.  The modern road is reasonably wide but impossibly steep.   Like many of Corfu’s West coast beaches, it is a small expanse of sand beneath steep cliffs, and according to the locals it gets smaller every year. (It’s also a nudist beach, but we reckoned (correctly) that is was too chilly to be nude.)

Neighbouring Ermones beach is fascinating.

The beach is a mixture of sand and small pieces of black seaweed; pleasantly bouncy under foot when dry, but a treacherous quagmire when wet. 

The sea is dark blue, light blue, black (from the sea weed)  and white. It was a very stormy day (earlier we had lost our power because  of a fallen tree) and the surf was wild.

Inland it was peaceful and pastoral as usual

One of Palaeokastistra’s beaches, as lovely as ever.  (Again, very little sand)

 

A peaceful end of the day at Glyfada Beach — one of the large ones in the area

 

We are in Corfu for the week, and are greatly enjoying it.

The sea views are amazing, and I have never seen such lovely turquoise seas. Love the rock formations.

 

Gerald Durrell blamed himself for making Corfu such a popular holiday destination.

I blame Gerald Durrell (who incidentally was born in the same small town as I was, Jamshedpur, India!!) for the hordes of the most gorgeous stray dogs and cats everywhere.

Irene, who loves his books told me of a scene in “The Garden of the Gods,” where Durrell asks the owner of a pregnant dog for a puppy. The Durrells already had four dogs, and their mother had refused to have any more. However, he reckoned that if he arrived with a puppy, their mother would not say no. So the owner shows up with a pup, but not the one Gerry wanted. When he goes back with her, he hears the ground barking and heaving. She had buried the blind pups alive, and excavates them, their mouths filled with soil from their barking.  The more they barked, the more soil entered, until they would have choked to death. He showers her with his best Greek curses and takes them home, and his mother lets him keep them. All of them! Wondering if the descendants of these fabulous eleven now populate Corfu.

We went to the Paleokastristra Monastery, also called Theotokos Monastery this morning. My, what a monastery—quite unlike any Catholic monastery I’ve seen. A strong odour of cat’s pee. Dozens of beautiful cats all over, on the grape arbour, in the courtyards, mating on roofs, tiny newborn kittens suckling in cardboard boxes.

 

The most spectacular view from the courtyards of the glittering Ionian sea.

Glorious icons and mosaics.

 

I particularly loved the layout, gracious courtyards beneath grape arbours. Another thing which struck me was the complete absence of the cat-loving monks.

 

Walked to modestly named Bella Vista with startling views of the Ionian islands, and explored a couple of gorgeous beaches.