4 years ago today 12.31.07, i was holed up in my house over christmas vacation starting this blog & joining facebook for the first time. wow, did those 4 years go fast. i am so thankful for the relationships i’ve made here, many of you i’ve now had the privilege to meet in real life, too, and i can’t say enough how grateful i am for all i continue to learn out here. when i first started blogging i made a commitment to blog once a week for one year to see what happens. that evolved into two years, then three years, and now it’s time to re-evaluate for a fourth year. every time i wonder–should i keep it going or call it a day?
blogging is an extremely vulnerable exercise. so many things can be misconstrued, used against you, misinterpreted. i can’t tell you the number of times the minute i hit “publish” i have felt panic. but i have also learned something really important through this discipline–it doesn’t really matter. it’s just too much brain damage to think through that all of the time. the much more important thing–and why i started this blog in the first place–was to practice staying current and freely sharing (from my heart not my head) my experience, struggles, passions, what-i-keep-learning, and dreams about life & church & relationships without editing all the time.
i hope to continue in 2012, at least as far as i can tell right now. i do know that i’m pretty buried with day-to-day life at the refuge, which is more important than this blog & pretty hard to juggle along with my pile of kids! but i will just keep doing what i can do and leave it at that. i don’t have any big commitments here other than to actually wrap up some of the things i-had-hoped-to-post-in-2011-but-never-got-around to-because-it’s-always-so-nutty-here, like the 8 ways to shrink a church series, a few more view from the margins interviews, and some stuff that got stirred up at our walking wounded weekend (i would love to have you join us for a 4 week online class starting the first week in february, too, if you are hurting & on the outs and would like to feel less stuck–the date changed because of some scheduling things on our end). i want to keep exploring the ideas in down we go, too, and in the first part of 2012 really would like to hear more what some of it has stirred up in your practices. well, that’s plenty to keep me busy.
if there’s anything specific you’d like to process in this upcoming year, let me know! email me or put it in the comments.
meanwhile, here’s a quick round-up of the top 10 posts of 2011 around here:
#1. why sometimes i get sad – my story of getting dumped as a baccalaureate speaker when some conservative pastors found out a female pastor was speaking. just.plain.weird. yeah, we still have a long way to go on this issue.
#2. yep, i guess i’m a heretic – and yep, none of these things are all that heretical when it comes to being a Jesus follower, in my opinion, but unfortunately a lot of systems have been hijacked by a lot of rules. i guess a lot of you are heretics too!
#3. while the world is crying out for hope, we’re talking about theology – my theory is that we’d much rather talk about theology than actually have to practice it because it’s a lot easier.
#4. cross-gender friendships – men & women can learn to live alongside one another as friends, brothers & sisters. it just takes courage & practice & God’s help. in april i’ll be part of a gathering in chicago exploring this topic hosted by my friend dan brennan.
#5. Jesus school: not the most inspiring in town – this is an old post & i think about it all the time, how hard but good it is to be in Jesus school.
#6. rising up from below – sometimes i go a little prophetess.
#7. white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, economic privilege – it’s good for us to remember how much it exists. it’s not bad that we have it; the question is how are we going to use it?
#8. pericardiums – love hurts.
#9. loving God in lots of different ways – i am so happy that so many different people in various contexts used this material in groups & churches to explore how we connect with God. i loved this material & glad it made its way into other people’s hands & hearts.
#10. a nifty chart for the journey: stages in the life of faith – this post continues to be one of the most popular & i think it’s because this chart really helps us identify where we are on the spiritual journey, especially when we’re going through a lot of shifts, and what “going through the wall” looks like. it’s in down we go, too, in one of my favorite chapters–welcoming pain.
lots of love and peace to all of you. thanks for reading & have a fun new years eve! be safe.