Who says what?

Novelist, mother, minister, and yoga teacher muses on books, babies, motherhood, and what matters with reverent humor.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Blogging Again as the Anti-Blogger

A good true confession: I don't like blogs. As I'm blogging this, that should say it all.

I don't have anything personal against blogging, I just have a hard time reading things on a screen. If someone wants my attention, I'd prefer a letter. So while I have tried to read other blogs, even a sentence or two may seem too much to keep my focus--though I will sit and read a novel in a day.

Why blog when I am not of that blogging world? When I was the last hold out for an email account among my friends, the last to get a cell phone, when I have still maintained my decision not to facebook/tweeter/get linked in to anyone anywhere in the cyber world?

In part because I have not found, in my feeble fumbling around the web, any place representing the liberal, feminist and devout way of being in the world, and because I began this blog at the publication of my first novel to have a place in the cyber world to "meet" people and so want to continue what I've begun, though change it somewhat to reflect all the various parts of my life: as mother, writer, minister, teacher, yogini, student, believer.

That said, I don't think the web is the place where all the true stuff happens, but a place where it *may* begin. Deep friendship, love, fortefied faith, hope on hopeless days, wisdom, strength for going forward, kindness and joy--they are not here in totality, but like a door opening, may draw us to connect with real people (including ourselves) in real ways. Anonymity, and the crude criticism it allows, have too great a home on the web. I don't think blogs and websites provide a venue for the best of who we are as humans (sometimes missing it by a long shot), but occasionally we do find that we are not alone in this world. And that is a beginning.

And also, so often, we write for no readers, we blog and post and no one notices. But then we write what we need to write for ourselves--and therefore we must be the ones who needed to hear our own message. If a voice crying in the wilderness hears itself, has it been truly heard?

I'm going to have to go with a YES on this one.

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