I have been pondering this shadyvale.org experiment a bit. I threw up this site, and encouraged friends to start their own blogs. To highlight blog posts that are interesting, we have promoted them to the front page.
Over time the promoted stories have built up, and so I have just trimmed them back to some of the highlights of a broad range of topics. Perhaps my thought is that the majority of the entries on the site have been political, when I think that we have much more to offer about our personal and spiritual lives.
So rather than struggling with this thought, I have decided to blog about it.
Are politics the only thing that we feel comfortable talking about? Are politics the most important thing in our lives that we have to share to the world?
I know my posts have been far and few between. Perhaps frozen by the desire to make sure my communication is clear, I communicate nothing. Really the nature of a blog is an online journal. Some treat them like streams of consciousness with very little focus or deep thought. Others spend an eternity making each post the perfect essay. Somewhere in between I think is a healthy, organic yet purposeful, sharing of ideas. Not mearly linking to the latest news story, but sharing things that we are learning. Perhaps jotting down unrefined thoughts that need more time to process. Over time these snippets tell a story about our lives, and how they are affected by the truths that we learn.
In this there is purpose, and a theme. As believers in Christ, our lives our part of our witness, and the theme of our lives is to bring glory to God. The truth that we discover through the bible and our experiences changes our perspective on a great many things. We have a responsibility to share this perspective with the world. Wouldn't it be great to share with eachother what we have been learning in our times with God? Or perhaps sharing our struggles when we don't spend time with Him. Or as theNose had originally planned, publishing what we have learned from a specific bible study in the "book" section. Or even write a new book together, making a proposition or declaring a topic and then adding sections to it over time as they come to mind.
Yes, some news is worth calling attention to. And by all means there are things about our society and government that are important to discuss, and our very important to us. But I think the most interesting news, is news about ourselves, news about our discoveries and ideas, news that friends who moved out of town years ago would want to know has been happening in our lives.
Let me clarify, however. You can blog about whatever you would like on your blog (as long as its not offensive), after all its your blog. But I think we should be more selective about what gets promoted to the front page. I have added links on the right to active User Blogs. The XML rss icons are there to provide an easy way for people to read your blog with a feed reader or other software. We can use the site's taxonomy, or subjects to file our individual blogs into areas of interest. If there is a Subject you would like me to add, let me know. The subjects allow for navigation via the Site Map, the subjects as listed at the top of posts, or even via rss feeds. Later we can highlight main subject categories in a block on the right and include direct rss links so that people could subscribe to only the topics that interest them.
Comments
I feel you …
You make an excellent point. This is a great space to share personal, spiritual things. How deep should each contributor dig in their personal lives is ... well ... personal.
What I think would be a tremendous use of this site would be to publish commentaries. Really, no more than a collection of study notes, this could become a tool for those who don't know where to go. That is not to say that we are scholars, but like Wikipedia, when you get enough minds together with a little direction, you're bound to stumble on the truth. I may do this with Ecclesiastes ... or the next book of personal study, I'm still undecided.
The real passion in my personal blogging is not sharing snipets of my life, rather to promote an Augustinian return to logic in the christian life. What do I mean? Believers, especially those with political leanings, fail to fight the battle with the tools that can win. Our values are Biblical, our motives are Biblical, but often our arguments can't be. I'm not talking about sharing our faith experientially or evidentially; I'm talking about our impact on the world in the world We believe abortion is wrong, but few can articulate why other than "the Bible says so". As valid as that argument is, it holds no water in a court of law, increasingly so today. We oppose divorce because God abhors it, but we'll never convince an unbelieving world with biblical terms.
In short, I'm open to exploring a new avenue, and focusing on spiritual things. I love the collective book ideas.
Excellent!
I walked away from my computer, and realized that I hadn't completed my thought, and added the last paragraph. It must have been while you were making this excellent comment.
I agree on impacting our world, impacting society and politics. And I hope that you are not discouraged from continuing your eloquent blogs regarding political things, I know I am not going to stop speaking of them either. I think I was confusing perhaps the individuality of the personal blog with the purpose of the site structure... Its so flexible that it confuses me sometimes. :)
jamesj- JID: hystrix@jabber.g4g.org
"Believers, especially those
"Believers, especially those with political leanings, fail to fight the battle with the tools that can win. Our values are Biblical, our motives are Biblical, but often our arguments can't be."
I think that the vast majority of Christian ideals can be argued with secular reasoning.
I have used this one at my liberal university many times.
The purpose of evolution is to pass your genetic material to the next generation. Any mutation or change that will limit this will be removed through natural seleciton. Homosexuality reduces the possibility of passing the genetic makeup to the next generation. Thus, homosexuality must be a choice because it is incompatable with evolution.