The Question Has Been Asked....

... has blogging died? Or, at least, gone into a coma? One of my favorites attempts to answer here.

I know that I have little energy for blogging these days, and I don't exactly know why. At the moment I am immersing myself in certain ways of thinking about life in church, as a part of my regularly scheduled study leave. It is something that excites me, especially this foundational principle: nothing will work unless members of the congregation are, individually and collectively gripped by a new sense of devotion to Jesus.

Just typing those words makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I am not interested in being Pastor CEO, or being Pastor Spiritual Guru. But I am VERY interested in being Pastor Let's Go Follow Jesus! That interests me very much indeed.

Here's what I think is going on with Blogging and Me-- only my experience, not generalizable to any other bloggers who might find themselves, at present, in the doldrums. I think at the time of this blog's inception I was in a sort of spiritual crisis about whether I was going to be able to find a ministry, and then I found a ministry. Then I was in a spiritual crisis about being a closeted pastor in ministry, and then I came out of that closet. Then I was in a spiritual crisis about keeping my job, and as it turned out, I was able to keep my job. And now I'm about the work of the church. I am not saying I wasn't about the work of the church during all of the above, but I was very much about how it was affecting me, and blogging being an enterprise which can have its narcissistic side, that worked for my blogging. Now... I'm onto something else, something not so easily bloggable, something perhaps hindered by the constant looking in the mirror blogging entails.

I don't know. I love this online community, I am grateful for your presence and your prayers and your comments. But I don't know if I have enough to say just now, or if this blog will have to go dormant for a while until something else grows.

This week I have been driving around listening to Kathleen Edwards. She is a singer Petra and Beloved and I discovered last October when she opened for the Girls who are Indigo. Oh my goodness, did we fall in love with her! Petra and I occasionally come across singer/ songwriters who make us want to write songs, because they are so extraordinary at the same time they are telling real, recognizably true stories. As the weather is crisping up and I am watching the leaves turn, I am taken back to the first few weeks after having heard her for the first time, when I drove around playing her cd in my car, over and over again. Then, one night, I had a medical event which required surgery. As I've been driving around in this beautiful, somewhat stirring weather, as I've been listening to this singer I love, I've been remembering the days and weeks after my surgery, when it felt sexy just to be alive. Know what I mean?