Blogs

I've taken some time off from blogging because I've been frustrated. Frustrated that blogging doesn't produce immediate results and that it seems so small and inconsequential. I mean, I currently don't have any followers other than one or two friends and my husband (who would all read my blog even if it was the most awful thing ever). Where we live, I've even felt stifled from intellectual networking or progressive discussions that produce change because the community in which we find ourselves seems less interested in intentional living and more interested in the comforts of church community or their own circumstances

So, for months I just read and hiked and prayed and waited for a great creation care non-profit to hire me or for us to pay off my undergrad loans and finish grad school (hoping both would come sooner than probable).

Frustrated, and, ultimately, limiting myself because I've been unwilling to be faithful with my opportunities and my circumstances, I feel as though I've lost much of my voice. A voice I used to have in plenty. Full of passion and full of ideas and full of action.

Recently I received a word from someone that I have much wisdom but have allowed lies to stifle my voice. I've looked for the BIG opportunities and I've neglected the journey. I've not been faithful to history, either, as all historical revolution has been preluded by intellectual quorums. I have settled for the dreams of Civil War but have forgotten the decades of senate debates and half-way related Seaneca Falls declarations and discussions. I've doubted the power of the individual and I've forgotten the value of the little pamphlets that have changed history. I've chosen complacency over the ever persistent, ever patient fight. I've devalued the blog.

It's funny to equate a blog with no followers to seminal works such as those by Elizabeth Cady Staton or as "Uncle Toms Cabin" or Martin Luther's letters in Worms. But if I'm being true to history and true to our present culture, blogs are the word press, they are the quill, they are the oral traditions that so influenced our history through our ancestors. They are the culture in which we presently reside. They are the voice and they will be the history makers of our time.

So, with much resilience, motivation from my husbands own blog (chapter37now.com) and some unintended motivation from a friend who is still living her passions in the same environment in which I've thus far only felt held back, I find myself back at my word press. It's gonna be messy and I can't picture what the results will entail, but it's worth it... Because, ultimately, what I really want is revolution, and revolution comes at many costs and requires a long journey. So here is my real fight, in the tension of the frustration and the tension of small influence.