Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Praying Mantis -- Blogging as a Spiritual Discipline

Praying Mantis writes on "The Spiritual Discipline of Blogging"

1. Pray for Insight on God and his people
2. Share insight with others
3. Read God's word and see what he is speaking to your heart
4. Share insight on the word with others
5. Pray for others based on what you are reading in their blog
6. Encourage others on other blogs
7. Be honest about needing prayer on your blog when appropriate
8. Dare to move beyond the blog - invite others you have met (when safe) to come minister with you
9. Share financially with others when you see needs on blogs
10. Blog as if unto God.

Beautiful! Journaling has long been a spiritual activity -- Blogging fits a different need/purpose, yet similar. More interactive. It can be an intentional habit in your prayer life or in your spiritual formation, it can aid with the interpretation of scripture, but unlike journaling, blogging is done in community. As a Methodist, I would even hazard saying it is a form of Christian conferencing. They are not private -- intentional vulnerablity can be exploited -- by both the reader and writer. They tend to be more ego based than journals (not necessarily a bad thing) -- personal journals tend to focus more on the acts of God in our lives. But they also can be a sort of accountability group -- and a way to check out the "is this crazy or what?" types of questions. They really do help chronicle a life lived in faith in a new and different way. I'm going to think about this more...
Peace.


1 comment:

daisymarie said...

good stuff!