Why I Love/Hate Blogging and Why You Should Too

Once upon a time I wrote a weekly email for all of my friends called “God Sightings.” This was long ago when AOL ruled the world and people ran to the store and back while their computers where “dialing up.” I’m not sure, but I think dinosaurs also went extinct during this period. By this period I mean while AOL was dialing up.

In “God Sightings” I usually told a story about seeing God in the everyday and mundane things of life. People really liked it. Or so they said.

Then someone suggested I write a blog. Being the faithful Lemming that I am I leaped into the blogging world.

Since that day I have had a love/hate relationship with blogging.

• I love blogging because the written word is powerful

I have dreamed of being a writer ever since the day I read “Go, Dog. Go!” by P.D. Eastman for the first time as a child. From that day forward I drowned myself in books. The written word has rescued me from loneliness, depression, and ignorance. Words strung together to form pictures and ideas have sailed me into new worlds. From the Bible to “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” the written word has changed the world.

All this reading gave me an ache to tell stories that move others the way so many books have transported and transformed me.

I love blogging because it is to writers what a blank canvas and full palette of paints is to an artist. Blogging is my invitation to tell stories on screen.

• I hate blogging because it saps the strength of the written word

There may be as many as 164 million blogs on the internet right now. Too much information. Thus we skim.

Skimming is sliding your eyes over a piece of writing looking for interesting or relevant ideas. By definition it means to not go deep. Most “how to blog” blogs claim this is how most readers interact with your blog. Therefore, they say, write short, easy to read blogs.

But skimming naturally promotes lower comprehension in the reader and a shallow development of ideas in the writer. I may have lost you already.

Blogging may be making both writer and reader shallow says Patricia Greenfield, from UCLA’s Children’s Digital Media Center.

I hate blogging because the thoughts and ideas that have transformed the human race cannot be communicated in word “tags” or how to articles.

• I love blogging for its easy access to an audience

Every writer knows, finding an audience is difficult. My wife is a faithful and honest reader of my work. But writing loses its appeal when only your mom and friends read it. There are over 2 billion internet users. That’s one heck of a potential audience. And blogging is free.

When I wrote articles for magazines or the Vail Daily my potential audience numbered only in the thousands. Plus blogging bypasses editors and query letters and–worse yet–rejection letters.

Blogging allows us to connect in ways paper communication rarely dreams of.

• I hate blogging because the audience is an enigma 

I don’t get blogging. When I write for magazines, I know each magazine has a set and defined audience. One does not write a hunting story for a parenting magazine.

What do lurkers in the blogosphere want? I have no idea. And neither do the billions of experts blogging about writing blogs. Blogging is like fly fishing in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Will the fish even see my fly?

Write short how to blogs, they say. Yet Lesley Carter writes one of the most successful blogs out there. It is often long, personal, and more of a story than a list.

And comments and the “like button” are no help. Liking may not mean the person actually likes your blog. They may actually be just fishing for followers on their own blog. Why, for example, did another blogger like my blog about God, when said blogger claims to be an atheist on their blog?  I hope it’s because of the content of the blog not just fishing.

Blogging is a daily frustration because slapping Tim Tebow’s name in my title gets me more hits than working hard on well thought out and well written prose.

I hate that.

I love/hate blogging because every time I post, I am already writing my next blog and at the same time vowing to quit blogging and write something serious. Like you, I post my blog and check my stats over and over because I love the instant feedback and responsiveness to the written word blogging provides. I respond to those who have taken my words seriously.

At the same time I castigate myself for my Lemming-like behavior and my addictive slavishness. I long for the simple days of just writing. Of taking an idea and shaping it and letting it go. But maybe that’s all blogging is anyway.

How about you? How do you love/hate this blogging world?

Living Spiritually as an Art: Counting on God

True epiphanies are rare. I’m not talking about instants of sudden inspiration or “aha moments.” Those are rare enough.

I’m talking about those times that the dictionary describes as “a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being,” those scarce times when God breaks through.

My first epiphany of the sacred kind came in 1972. It came like a meteor knocking me out of a degenerating orbit and into the path of redemption. As Phil Keaggy sang back then, God’s “love broke through.” That meteor saved my life.

I can count the other meteors on one hand.

Counting God’s Presence

But are those life shattering moments the only times we can count God’s presence? As if living spiritually is all mountain tops and glowing sunsets.

The late Guy Chase didn’t think so. Chase, a renowned artist, carried a piece of shirt cardboard and an India ink pen in his back pocket and every time he sensed God’s presence he yanked out the pen and placed a dot on the cardboard. He finally considered the strange piece of art finished after he had recorded 40,000 mini-epiphanies.

In the course of 2012 being the Year of Living Spiritually, I’ve tried similar experiments to heighten my ability to see God in the ordinary.

• I’ve shot random pictures and looked at them to see if there is anything I missed in the frame.
• I’ve journaled joys, sorrows, and memories.
• I’ve taken a day to look at life as a child would.
• I spent Holy Week trying to act in one way Jesus did each day.
• I’ve listened to silence.

Living Spiritually is an Art

What I’ve come to realize, besides how difficult it is to intentionally see God in daily life, is that living spiritually is more of an art than it is a science. Guy Chase seemed to know that. While I try to record my encounters with God in words and pictures (which are also art) and ideas, Chase counted them in artistic dots that, when taken as a whole, look to me like a doorway into some unknown and adventurous place. Chase’s art calls me into a new daily adventure of seeking God.

Chase’s art has also shown me that artistically representing something mysterious, such as an encounter with God, can often better capture those encounters rather than trying to define them precisely. Seeing living spiritually as an art gives God room to move and show up in my life. Not that we should’t try to articulate and define our experiences with God. It’s simply that God is more than we can count.

40,000 versus Infinity

Still I try. But I find I can’t count 40,000 of anything much less 40,000 times I’ve felt God present. In reality, even that number would pale to the truth of God’s omnipresence. There is not a cardboard big enough to record God’s continual caress of our lives.

As I scan Chase’s dots, I can only imagine how alive Guy Chase must have been during his art project. How he must have grown and changed, knowing he was never alone. And I realize how I long to hear just one or two of the things Chase saw and learned as he marked dots on his cardboard. How I yearn to live with such intensity and awareness.

Yet, as day 135 of the Year of Living Spiritually opens, I have noticed a laxness in my counting God’s presence. My daily journal entries have shortened, as has my God-attention span.

Chase must have grown tired too. But the final truth in his untitled, and now lost work of art, is that God does not grow tired of investing every molecule of life with his presence. You can count on that.

Eugene C. Scott can count to ten without using his fingers. Beyond that?  He is also very honored to count you as a reader and would love to hear about how you count God’s presence in your life. You can join the Living Spiritually community by following that blog and clicking here and liking the page. He is also co-pastor of The Neighborhood Church.

Into the Mist: Going Deeper Spiritually

By Eugene C. Scott

Some of my favorite times in the woods are when things are not quite clear. Clouds, like heaven reaching down, filter through the trees. Ghostly trunks stand out of the mist like distant soldiers on guard. Suddenly your senses are alive, alert.  You know there is something beautiful out  there just beyond sight, just beyond sound, just beyond yourself. And–nerves jangling–you wait.

That same mystery and anticipation I’ve found is part of trying to see the God-given soul in life. Or as we have named it here: living spiritually. But as I’ve ventured into the fog, I’ve glanced back now and then. Ironically that is when what this adventure is all about has become more clear. Today’s blog–and the next to follow–will feature reflections on a few of the things that I now see have helped me go deeper in my spiritual life.

I Woke Up:

Someone once joked, “Statistics show most car accidents happen within a mile of home; so I decided to move.” There’s a twisted kind of truth in that jest. Ruts and routines can be dangerous.

I’ve called 2012 “The Year of Living Spiritually.” I could also call it “The Year I woke Up.”

Not paying close attention to God, people, and the life around me was much like being in one of those half-sleep, half-waking dreams. You see it–and maybe remember it–but it makes little sense.

I’ve found that paying attention has been a simple way to see and better understand the spiritual all around me. A friend of mine has this quote at the bottom of all his emails. It never fails to stun me. “Today I woke up. Some didn’t. I think it’s gonna be a great day. I’ll take advantage of it.” Baron Batch

I Tried Something New:

A few months ago a friend, Cliff Hutchison, asked me to write a few more lyrics for a song called Love Like You he had started. The idea scared the Sam Hill out of me. Why me? I thought. I’m a story-teller. I am not, I repeat, am not musical. I took poetry writing classes in college and found rhyme and lyric constraining.

Against my better judgement I gave it a shot. I think it turned out pretty well. But more than that, it opened my eyes and heart to so many new things. The song is about our mothers and I now appreciate my late mother better. And the song writing process itself, with such a talented man, was amazing and humbling. Sitting in my study, Cliff played his guitar while we puzzled over just the right words and images until something beyond both of us was born. It was a profoundly spiritual moment. One I never would have experienced had fear reigned.

A professor of mine once said, “God is often in the green edges of new opportunities in you life.” This has been true for me this year.

Both of the above ideas were things I more or less stumbled upon, as if trees in the mist. What have you discovered that helps you live spiritually?

Eugene C Scott believes that life–especially spiritual life–is much more complex and rich than can be described in a blog. But he hopes these thoughts help. He is also co-pastor at The Neighborhood Church.

Connecting Your Story to God’s Story

Monday April 17, 1978 “was extremely windy and cold.” At work “the wind blew me off a ladder” and we were finally forced to quit and go home. In 1978 I was staying with my younger brother, sleeping on his couch. I was a twenty-one year-old depressed high school drop out and confused carpenter.

The economy was in shambles and getting worse. The Denver building boom was about to bust. Life looked and felt as bleak as the spring weather, except that I had started dating this young red-headed college girl who loved God with all her heart. I know this because Monday April 17 was the day I first began journaling, recording in a yellow notebook my thoughts and feelings and experiences.

“All in all this has been a good day,” I wrote at the end of my second day’s entry.  “Jesus has been on my mind quite a bit. I hope He is there more tomorrow.”

Looking back on those first entries, I can see Jesus was not only in my mind but always there with me tomorrow and the next day and next day for more than thirty years now. I now know Jesus was always ahead of me writing the next part of the story, the next chapter of my life. My challenge has been to faithfullyu live that story and then record it.

For me journaling is a spiritual discipline that helps me know myself and connect with God. David too practiced this spiritual discipline.

Eugene C. Scott joins Mike in writing A Daily Bible Conversation twice a week.

TODAY’S READING (click here to view today’s reading online)

Isaiah 60:1-62:5

Philippians 1:27-2:18

Psalm 72:1-20

Proverbs 24:11-12

INSIGHTS AND EXPLANATIONS

Philippians 1:27-2:18: This section of Paul’s letter holds one of the most beautiful lyrics and profound pieces of theology in all the New Testament. Chapter 2:6-11 is probably an ancient hymn or creed of the early church that proclaims the central truth of Christ’s incarnation, death, resurrection, and exaltation.

All four aspects of the truth of Christ’s life are woven together and one cannot exist without the other. Though many focus on the cross as God’s ultimate act of salvation, Christ’s death would not have been possible without his making himself nothing and coming to earth. Nor was his crucifixion extraordinary with out the resurrection. And his life overall was unremarkable without his death, resurrection and exaltation.

This means Christmas, Easter, and Ascension are equally holy, mysterious and powerful in God’s plan of salvation for each of us.

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THE WORD MADE FRESH

David, King of Israel, journaled also, obviously more poetic, profound, and inspired than my efforts. Psalm 72 ends saying, “This concludes the prayers of David son of Jesse.” The first seventy-two psalms, almost half the book, therefore, are primarily David’s poems, songs, thoughts, questions, struggles, answers, and epiphanies.

I have often imagined David sitting under a purple sky caring for his sheep and pouring out his heart to God in poetry. Or pacing his throne room muttering his complaints against God. Then finally in his bed chamber refining his ancient journal entries and, with God’s hand on his quill, turning his life’s story into a poem that millions would read and be touched and encouraged by. In them we learn about his view of and love for God, his failing family, his leadership, his adultery, repentance, and through it all, his dependence on God. In these journal entries we see real life, lived with a real God. Before God touched us through David’s journal, I can imagine David, in a difficult day, rereading some of his entries and being given new strength, new insight, new courage through his own story.

I’m glad I recorded some of the raw and real things I did over the last thirty years. I’m not so sure I’m as brave as David to let anyone else read them. I wrote about my doubts, my lust, my faithfulness, my fears (lots of those), my friends, family, failures, my slow, sometimes painful, growth and my red-headed wife always showing me how better to love God.

My old journals carry my story and show how it connects to God’s: how God has walked beside me in it all. Just as God did with David.

Though the Psalms are beautiful, like my journal they are not sanitized. David’s psalms tell us we too can be real with God. And that when we are real with him we open ourselves up to his touch.

Journaling is not just a literary practice. It lets us tell our stories and lets us know our stories are connected to God’s story.

1. Which passage spoke most to you?
2. What did the four have in common?

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Eugene co-pastors The Neighborhood Church in Littleton, CO and writes a blog eugenesgodsightings.blogspot.com