The Blogdom: Creating Significant Community?

There seems to be a developing conversation stemming from recent posts and comments on various blogs I’m reading surrounding questions of our motivations in our blogging, blog “stalking” (voraciously reading other people’s blogs either anonymously or known), or blog blogging (writing significant comments on one another’s blogs or discovering new realizations in your comment that might otherwise been a blog post on your own blog). Okay, I’m getting the feeling that I’m on the cusp of developing the first ever Blog language…

ANYway, the question has been raised, are we (the women who are living out previous said paragraph) using this as a replacement for something lacking in our lives…whether that be a spouse, or community, or a venue for processing and being heard.

The question of my own recent attraction to this new world of blogging has been stirring in my own head and heart for over a month now. What is it that I’m finding within the html code that I’m not finding in my own current life? Is it just a mere lack of the social life that plagues nearly every single woman in ministry? (“All work and no play sure make Blythe a dull girl”?) Is it a means of escape from an otherwise uneventful life? Is it a lack of really feeling heard well by people and knowing that my thoughts have value?

I guess my most recent thought is, what if it’s not about what’s lacking in our lives? What if it’s about finding something? Maybe even more like stumbling on some new treasure that we never knew existed – a treasure of sort being found in other people’s lives and perspectives that enlarge our own in some way. It kind of makes me feel like I’m not as alone and disconnected….that maybe my heart, my life and my thoughts are of great value and theirs to my own.

Awhile back I watched the new movie Shall We Dance? There’s a part in the movie where Susan Sarandon’s character is explaining to the detective she’s hired about what marriage is:

People get married because we need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet. What does any one life really mean? But in a marriage you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things. All of it. Every time. Everyday. You’re saying, “Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.” (Susan Sarandon, Shall We Dance)

I think this statement less describes marriage as it does a fundamental desire of the human heart…to be known deeply and to know that your life amounts to something. Even deeper than that desire is that I think we want someone to catch it! We want to be seen. We don’t want other people to miss out on what we bring and offer to the world. Of course, as women maybe this may be just the deep question we’ll always be wrestling with, you know? (For more thoughts on this, check out Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge.)

I think my blogging, blog hopping, blog stalking, blog blogging (oh good grief!) all kind of reveal that my heart wants to be heard and seen. I want to know that my thoughts, my heart has value and at the same time they resonate with someone else or cause them to think in new ways. So, for me right now, it’s not about replacing as it is discovering. And I’m loving every minute of it.