Ginger and I had time to meet for a cup of coffee in the middle of the day — unusual for a Thursday. When we sat down at Dunkin’ Donuts she asked, “So what do you get out of writing your blog?”
She’s never one for superficial questions, even during coffee break.
A couple of things came to mind.
First, I’m writing at least five days a week. This blog will be two months old on Monday and I will be sneaking up on fifty posts by then. I love to write, I want to write, I feel called to write and, for many years, I have let other things take the time I dreamed of using to put words together in a way that was meaningful to me. I feel like I’m making a good offering of my gifts. Writing regularly has also had a diminishing effect on my depression. This blog has made for an easier winter.
Second, I’m making significant connections. Some writers are loners: they go off by themselves, never sharing ideas, and stay alone until they give birth to whatever they are trying to get out of themselves. Not me. I do my best writing in the context of interactions: I throw out an idea, see what gets tossed back, and then make something new out of all of it. I’m deeply fed as a writer and a person by a sense of belonging. This blog has led me to some old friends and several new ones. Each week, my list of “stuff I like to read” grows because someone leaves a comment that leads me back to their blog and I try to pass what they are doing along to others.
I realize that either one of those answers is not unique to me as one of millions out here in the blogosphere, but they both bring me back here day after day to see what will flow from my fingers to the screen.
Peace,
Milton
“I’m making significant connections.” As Eugene Peterson says in his book, “Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places,” “Christ plays in community.” I think that applies to virtual ones as well as flesh-and-blood ones.
Keep it up too… There are many of us who have LOVED reading your thoughts…
Milton, you may feel as if you are “one of millions,” but you are the only one who can say what you have to say the way that you say it. For me, your blog and that of your friend, rlp, are reassurance of the potential of online community. It’s hard for me to read some forums because of all the bile and meanspiritedness that bubbles up. But this is good food, spiritual and otherwise.
Milton –
I’m in the middle of Donald Miller’s ‘Searching for God Knows What’ and I am ecstatically embracing the TRUTH of loving Jesus in community. I am blessed by the bones of my brothers and sisters who walk with me in my literal community, and the additional gift of communication with people like you is almost too much to bear! It is remarkably cool.
I’m so glad you write; I’m so glad you connect me back to Billy Crockett music; I’m so glad you give us recipes; I’m so glad that Christ gives us a vision of global community to inspire and motivate us, and that He lives here in this blogosphere….
keep offering those gifts. you bless me.
beth
I’ve said this a bunch of times in response to the query: Blogging is my way of answering the question, ‘How are you?” I absolutley hate…hate that question in passing. No matter how hard I try to teach myself that the question is just an informal exchange, there is something in me that flinches, because the answer is, well, complicated. Blogging is my way sitting down and answering the question, artfully I hope. But it tends to be what is most artfully on my mind, and for me, that is what is most important lately. It is, how I am.
Thank you for offering your gift. (And it is indeed one.)