When I was in Cambridge visiting the unlinkable and inestimable Jeff, I was lucky enough to have dinner with the adorable Consider the Lilies author, Rob. Among many topics we briefly discussed blogging and/or the lack thereof. I have had a similar conversation with Jeff, and an ongoing debate with myself on the subject. I am having severe blogger's block these days. Not writer's block. I can't really stop writing, especially in my journal. And it's not that my thoughts are so private and precious that I don't want to share them. What is it?
I am beginning to think blogging is bad for me. Not that blogging is bad - I love blogs. I scavenge a lot of spiritual nourishment from blogs. I see blogs doing great work, as well as being funny, exciting, moving, and having the power to knit together far-flung Friends and seekers, and giving them a small window (and sometimes a door) into each other's daily lives. Since "community" often hardly exists in our "real lives", this growing gathering of online Friends is becoming important and vital, and it warms my heart to see the relationships it is creating not only widening by deepening. In short, I love blogs.
To the pure all things are pure, and to the simple, I expect, all things are simple. The truth dawns on me more and more each day just how far from plain I really am, however grey my wardrobe gets. I do not think plainly, I do not speak plainly, I do not write plainly...I don't even pray plainly, most of the time. I have a hugely vested interest in convincing the world at large that I am not only brilliant and funny and insightful, but spiritually precocious and voracious in my search for the truth, and my blog, whether in this incarnation or its previous existence as "Salivating Circuits" has been consistently used for these purposes. Not these purposes exclusively - I've meant it all very sincerely. But the query that keeps stopping me before I post is this...am I really, in this post, seeking to explore an issue of faith or practice or thought with the support and public "eldership" of this blogging community, or am I writing an Op-ed piece? The answer is generally always both, and these days I am very concious of the second half of that equation. I want people to know what I'm thinking at the moment, and I want them to think it's good.
Again, is this really so bad? Isn't it kind of natural? Well, yeah, but with me it is really a touch too natural. I write this blog for the Glory of Amanda, and not for the Glory of God. I've really got to find a way to harness my gifts and talents to that they don't run away with me in situations and applications that encourage me to seek praise for myself, and so far I have not been sucessful in that. Pruning far back and waiting humbly in silence may help, and I don't think that it is hiding my lamp under a bushel. The Light that we are commanded to let shine before all men is not our own little strands of twinkle-lights that we have draped all over us. I'm so busy with my tinsel fire that I will miss the spark that has been placed in me.
I really want to get rid of all of the stage props in my life - cardboard cutouts, tinfoil, spotlights aimed on the wrong mark. I do want to put away childish things and stop playing, and I want silence so deep, and light so inescapable, that I absolutely cannot fool myself anymore.
As well as being an outlet tailor-made for my most pernicious faults, I am also finding that this blog is ineffective as a threshing place. I am seeking as hard as ever, but I am coming close to the perilous and disheartening thought that God may sometimes give me knowledge without understanding or immediately discernable reason. I don't like this much - I am intensely addicted to understanding, and to sharing (showing off) my understanding. I am finding constantly that there are some things I know, but almost nothing I understand, when it comes to spirituality, and I think I'm supposed to try and come to some peace with that right now. Blogging encourages the opposite in me. Also, when I begin to blog about a thought I've had, I am likely to spend a lot of time researching and building it up, lending it a weight it may not have arrived with. Again, not necessarily bad, but not necessarily necessary, either.
I have been sad and frustrated when bloggers I am fond of lay down their blogs, even if they cite the most unimpeachable reasons for doing so. I don't intend to fully lay down this blog, but only to do my threshing in more solitude and silence, where I can concentrate more purely. If I have any grain left afterwards, I fully intend to come back here and share it. When I come across a bit of teaching, poetry, reflection, or other lovely thing in my reading, I'll certainly bring it here, as well.
Thank you all for your support and prayers.
11 comments:
Oh no, has the Quaker blogging backlash occurred. First Beppe declared an hiatus from Quaker-themed blogging and now Rob and Amanda are having doubts?! Oh no, are all the cool kids going to stop their blogs? You're not going to start writing about 80s bands too are you?
Seriously though. Those of us who approaching blogging as a form of ministry should be prepared for it to dry up. The Spirit does not speak to us in one voice and does not speak to us all the time. God teaches us humility and obedience by giving us dry spells and the kind of ego-suffering they represent is a true gift of love to us.
I've gone through periods when I've wondered whether I had about six essays in me and had written each of them twice and should just stop, times when the posts slowed down almost to a stop. Considering all the readers to Nonviolence.org, I feel like I should post more frequently there but sometimes I just have nothing particularly insightful to say, even while I'm blogging up a storm about Quakerism. That's okay. And I think our words are stronger if we just accept that they aren't really our words, not if we deliver them with obedience to their truest Source and that we can't command the speaking of them. Our Quaker testimony is that even the best of words spoken without call from the Spirit are simply dry kindling.
I love the old stories of well-known Quaker ministers who traveled for weeks to some far-away city, who's arrival drew crowds of Friends and onlookers alike, but who weren't led to speak once worship began. Their Christ-led silence taught the audience more about Quakerism than any number of the canned speaches we prefer today. (I should say, this is not the same silence as those who slept through meetings or kept to the back benches out of fear or who hoarded the ministy they had been given).
I am grateful for your questioning and would be overyjoyed if in faithfulness you laid down your blog. I have seen a clear gift of ministry in you, even if at times it's caught in self-ness (as it is for all us mere humans!). I trust that you are sincerely seeking God's counsel and will only continue to grow in true gospel ministry. If that means a hiatus, then glory be!
But don't make a idol of any hiatus and don't be afraid to come back and testify to us about any truth that's been given to you to share.
We'll talk more about this in a few weeks when you and Rob and Jeff and Ryan come a-visiting. Way may be opening for another sort of online ministry (Martin once again hinting some announcement deep in a comment).
Your Friend (as you know),
Martin the Quaker Ranter
Ah, Martin. I promise not to do any 80's bands extravaganzas. Though I might take to posting my favourite indiebands-gone-mainstream lyrics. There is a They Might be Giants song that's been stuck in my head today...
A woman came up to me and said
I’d like to poison your mind
With wrong ideas that appeal to you
Though I am not unkind
She looked at me, I looked at something
Written across her scalp
And these are the words that it faintly said
As I tried to call for help:
There’s only one thing that I know how to do well
And I’ve often been told that you only can do
What you know how to do well
And that’s be you,
Be what you’re like,
Be like yourself,
And so I’m having a wonderful time
But I’d rather be whistling in the dark
Whistling in the dark
Whistling in the dark
Whistling in the dark
Whistling in the dark
Whistling in the dark
There’s only one thing that I like
And that is whistling in the dark
A man came up to me and said
I’d like to change your mind
By hitting it with a rock, he said,
Though I am not unkind.
We laughed at his little joke
And then I happily walked away
And hit my head on the wall of the jail
Where the two of us live today.
But yes. I sometimes feel as though I'm struggling out from under a whole forest of dry kindling.
But you know, the important thing is that I've realized that maybe I'm a Lumberjack, and I'm Okay.
Or something.
Being very very new to the Quaker blogging community, I can say that your blog has been very helpful to me in just that short time. :)
Perhaps part of your reasoning is not completely pure, but honestly, you will never BE completely pure or simple... life is a journey along those lines, rarely with the attainment of 100% purity or enlightenment... and if you are helping just one person with your blog (and I just professed to be one of those people), it can't be that bad. :)
Hope to still see you posting from time to time... I've enjoyed your writing and found a lot of help in it.
Blessings,
Brandice (Quaker Monkey)
Amanda, several Friends have already spoken much that is on my heart: the sense of purity and ministry within your posts; the hope that no matter how you are led, that you be faithful and obedient; the understanding of your search for clearness; the desire to be in integrity--within yourself and with God.
You seem to be willing to pay attention to your "blogger's block," even as it seems to pain you to not be blogging regularly. And you seem to be weighing what Jung has called "the shadow"--the hidden (or not so hidden) motivations that drive us.
It also seems to me that you are weighing what of your wisdom is truly of God and what is of you: are you led to blog?
I appreciate the questions you bring to the table, and your openness in sharing them with us: can I be obedient to the Spirit in little bits, or must I be obedient all at once? And what do I do with my arrogance, even if the better side of it is a reflection of my gift or ministry?
I feel the power of your question: Do you write for the glory of God or for your own glory? It is a question I have had to ask myself, too. In fact, it is a question that guides me when I blog.
Do I fall short? Yes, sometimes. It has been one of the most challenging spiritual tasks I have been facing recently: allowing myself to be human, even as I seek to be both faithful and humble.
Like Martin, I want to encourage you to keep asking questions; to hold them tenderly, not accusingly; to trust that God is speaking to you, gently and compassionately.
Blessings, as always,
Liz
Your post "Midblog Crisis" was beautiful, not only in its nuanced description of the inner processes that led you to lay down your blogging pen, and in the gentleness and respect with which you treat yourself when you find fault with what you've been doing, but in the example it sets for the rest of us.
May God use your period of silence to deepen your wisdom and lend weight to your words, which will be His words, when you re-emerge from it. Your ministry to us will continue, of course, whether you're expressing yourself outwardly or not, so long as you're remaining faithful and obedient. We'll feel the weightiness of your inward work, whether or not we recognize it as Amanda's inward work, whenever you join us in worship, and it will deepen our own. God bless you,
Thy Friend John
I miss seeing you at meeting (not that you haven't been around but not at the same time I was apparently). I will also miss your blogging until and unless it resumes.
As others have pointed out, your self-doubts reflect well on you. (There you go again, making yourself look good).
What we should aim for, in my view, is a kind of unself-conscious honesty about ourselves: not getting too hung up on either our strengths or our shortcomings but knowing who we are and accepting it. It's just as easy as walking around a house 7 times without thinking of a polka-dot elephant.
- - Rich Accetta-Evans
Brooklyn Quaker
Post-script to my last comment: Of course we can easily walk around a house without thinking of a polka-dot elephant. I go for days and weeks without thinking of polka-dot elephants. But that's only because I'm not trying to. When I conscioiusly try not to think of polka-dot elephants I find it impossible. It's almost the same with my faults and virtues.
Dear Amanda,
One of the things I like about your blog was your description that it was built to contain the overflow from your honeymoon period with Quakerism. Perhaps the honeymoon is over, which is not the same as saying the marriage is ending, but rather that the opportunity exists to open up to a new depth of the relationship. New "honeymoon" periods may come and go, as you discover new resonances. Someone once said that the secret to a happy marriage is falling in love over and over again, each time with the same person. The same may be true for religion.
Spoken as someone whose 14 year relationship with Quakerism and with the man who is now my husband almost overlap exactly.
Amanda -
Your post brings tears to my eyes and I am THANKFUL for it! You've expressed so many of the sentiments that I feel; I can't tell you how much I treasure your visit last weekend.
Sometimes I read the blogs of others and feel intimidated. The words seem so clear, so raw and speak volumes to me. I am often struck down in silence and contemplation--so much so that I'm tongue tied to respond. I often feel like the only words I can say are, "Rob was here."
I am tired and weak today. Even this comment is difficult to eek out. It's Sunday morning and I look forward to Meeting. The Glory of his presence washes over me, and I know that I can rest.
Much Love to you,
Rob
What an unusual blog. It's refreshing to see something a little different.
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