The Fulwiler Awards for Awesomeness in Blogging
Wow! Thank you, thank you, thank you for the votes in the Catholic New Media Awards! I sincerely appreciate it. I was shocked when I saw that I got Best Written Blog, Most Spiritual Blog, Best Blog by a Woman, and People’s Choice Blog. No pressure though.
It’s only fair to note that some popular blogs weren’t on the nominations list, and likely would have beaten me in a very humbling way if they were (cough-cough American Papist). Nevertheless, I thought I’d put all the extra traffic I’m getting from the awards wins to good use by highlighting some great blogs that deserve a bigger audience!
This is by no means an exhaustive list of my favorite blogs; in fact, it’s an off-the-top-my-head collection of sites I like to read that you may not know about. I just about drove myself crazy trying to come up with a coherent list, my thought process being something like, Of course I want to plug Brandon…but he’s already getting tons of buzz from his book. So maybe Leila Miller? No, everyone’s already reading Leila. And JC Sanders is a must-read…but everyone knows about him now that he’s writing for VirtuousPla.net, right?” After about an hour of this I decided to just go through Google Reader and list the first few blogs I saw that always lead me to spend too much time in front of my computer because of their awesomeness. Thus, I present to you…
The Fulwiler Award for Excellence in
Making Me Waste Time on the Internet
Bad Catholic
Would someone please give this guy a book deal? And a TV show? Marc Barnes is a desperately-needed voice in modern Christianity: he’s young, smart, orthodox, full of energy, and hilarious. If you’re not reading his blog, stop what you’re doing right now and remedy this grievous error.
Example post: Y’all Suck at Sinning
A Catholic Worldview
This is the new blog of Aimee Cooper, who used to have a blog called The Historical Christian. Her posts are always lucid and insightful, and never fail to give me something to think about. And you’ve got to love someone who took the initiative to start a door-to-door evangelization program for Catholics!
Example post: The Death of my Brother, and Hope
Word Incarnate
This blog by Abbot Joseph (yes, he’s a real abbot) is so full of profound thoughts that I usually have to wait to read it until I have time to really digest everything he says. It’s the perfect read for a quiet morning when you have a cup of coffee and some time to dig deep into some serious spiritual reading.
Example post: The Dynamics of Despair
Slow Mama
This is a new lifestyle blog by Zoe Saint-Paul that includes some great contributors (like M.C. Cabaniss, who enjoys “bourbon, books read in hammocks, picking on the mandolin, and searching for the perfect biscuit recipe” — love that). Between the beautiful pictures and well crafted prose, these ladies will inspire you to unplug from our fast-paced world and live slowly.
Example post: Just a Note
The Deeps of Time
If you have even a mild interest in science and astronomy, go add this blog to your bookmarks right now. Michael Baruzzini does an excellent job of highlighting the most interesting stories from the world of science, occasionally examining them from a Catholic perspective. It’s one of the most readable, well done science blogs out there, so the fact that it’s Catholic as well is a great bonus.
Example post: Every Experiment Proves God
Steve Gershom
If I waited one more day on this, I don’t think I would be able to put Steve in the “undiscovered” category. His blog is blowing up, and for good reason. His tales of being a faithful Catholic while being gay are funny, touching, inspiring and insightful. He’s a great writer with some important things to say.
Example post: What Did You Expect?
Seeing and Believing
What a great idea for a blog: A roundup of the best Catholic videos. I don’t think I’ve seen a video on there yet that I didn’t find to be well worth my time to watch.
Example post: Rationality of Belief in God
The Theology of Laundry
Marissa K. Nichols is a mom who’s also getting a Master’s Degree in Theology, and she shares great reflections on faith and life from the perspective of a wife and mother. All of her posts are well-reasoned, thought-provoking, and sometimes humorous.
Example post: Bringing Children “to the Sidewalk”
Scrutinies
What I love about Dorian Speed (yes, that’s her real name) is that she’s funny without even trying. As a fellow tech nerd, we sometimes exchange emails about how to get the CSS in the master WordPress template to render correctly with the HTML generated by the PHP, and she manages to crack me up when writing about that. On her blog she covers everything from catechesis to homeschooling to general life stuff, and it’s always good.
Example post: Black Friday: The Year I Learned My Lesson
The Catholic Young Woman
This is a great group blog written by Catholic young women for the purpose of encouraging one another as they seek to stay strong in their faith in our crazy culture. Their sincere, sweet tone is a refreshing antidote to a lot of the negativity and cynicism that’s out there in the blog world.
Example post: Love, Freely Chosen
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Congratulations to the recipients of this extremely prestigious award! I’m sure that as soon as I hit publish I’ll think of five more that I want to kick myself for not mentioning, but if I analyze this anymore I won’t get it posted at all. Enjoy checking out some of these great sites, and thanks again for the votes in the New Media Awards!
A blog about prayer, poverty and the unexpected joys of the Christian life
Today I’m guest posting over at my friend Abigail’s blog, writing about her birth story and the lessons about fear and anxiety that we can all take away from it. You can read it here.
While I’m at it, I figured I might as well introduce you to her blog, since it’s one of my favorites. Abby has a great story: she was a liberal feminist lawyer from Smith College who has since become a devout Catholic housewife and Third Order Carmelite. If you’re looking for some meaty essays to linger over with a warm cup of coffee, you’ve come to the right place.
Some of her most powerful posts are about embracing life in our culture of death — especially that she did not always see things the way she does now. Her “How I became pro-life” piece was what originally inspired me to write mine, and I was fascinated by her recent post about how she receives more scorn as a housewife than she did when she was a deacon at notoriously secular Smith. One of her best posts (which is among the best blog posts I’ve ever read) was about how she and her husband dealt with the news that any children they have are at significant risk for Cystic Fibrosis:
Then came the devastating news from the genetic counselor [responding to their concern that genetic CF could impact their children's children]. “No, your baby has the 1/4 chance of having a fatal disease, not your grandchildren.” Then to ease the burden on my stricken face, “Don’t worry. This is the only baby who will have that risk. For all the other babies, we’ll do an amino, if the fetus is CF positive, we’ll take care of it. Sorry that we didn’t catch this one until it was too late.” [...]
I cried into fist after fist of tissues. I argued my way out of a same-day amino by saying “I don’t want to worry about miscarriage on Christmas. Let me go home, now.” I felt scared. I felt alone. There was all this intense medical pressure to do a test which would only tell us a basic hands up or hands down CF result a mere two weeks before my due date. [MORE]
She’s also written powerful posts on pregnancy loss that delve into the complexities of grief. She writes of losing her baby to a late miscarriage:
Each morning I would wake up and the first thought was “I’m not pregnant anymore.” My first thought, before I even registered that it was morning or that we had moved into a new apartment or even that my husband was sleeping next to me. My first thing each morning was this loud shouting sentance “I am not pregnant!” I would just realize that my stomach was fine and my muscles weren’t sore and the whole host of physical sensations that are so annoying when you are pregnant were missing. Feeling back to normal was my punch in the gut. My grieving thing would start all over again. [MORE]
But her posts aren’t all about sad stuff! I was very inspired by her tips on taking young children to daily Mass. I love all her stories about embracing poverty, like the humorous and poignant one about life on the bus after they couldn’t afford a car anymore:
Last Sunday, my husband shouted to me “I can’t believe we both have Graduate Degrees!” as we waited at a bus stop for an extremely late City bus. [...]
I looked at Jon in confusion. I didn’t immediately understand the meaning of my husband’s statement. After all, it was our gigantic $200,000 joint student loan debt which necessitated us taking the City Bus to Mass in the first place. [Then] I suddenly “got” the irony of our current situation. In grad school, we’d spent hours hunched over lap tops in dimly lit libraries. We mastered courses in vague Latin terms and 18th Century Japanese Landscape Painting. We wrote term papers. We passed finals. We aced hours of job interviews. If not tons of wealth and worldly honor, there was supposed to be some sort of comfortable middle class existence that came as a reward to all of that hard work.
Never once, in all those years of study, did we consider that our future children would wander snow banks in their church clothes as we waited for a late City bus. In America, people with graduate degrees are not supposed to live lives without a car. [MORE]
In another post she wrote about the economic downturn, and offered people who may be experiencing first-time financial hardship some words of encouragement:
I’ve been hanging out in the desert of financial uncertainty for a while. Let me show you around.
It’s harsh here, but beautiful. Here’s a place to test an inner strength you never knew you had. The friends who see you in your humility, the ones who lend you diapers when your babies run out, or who whip up baked lasagna when their own husbands are unemployed, or who join their hearts in prayer when you just can’t take the collection calls anymore, those are the dear, dear friends. You can’t make a single friend like that on a singles cruise in the Aegean Sea.
It is harsh here in the desert. Yet it is still. It is the perfect place to hear the soft, tender words of God. [MORE]
Even before I knew her personally, Abigail’s blog was a source of constant inspiration for me. I hope you enjoy it as well.
Undiscovered Gems: Take the Poor With You
A post from the Undiscovered Gems series
Every now and then I like to highlight a favorite “undiscovered gem” blog to introduce my readers to one of my favorite tucked-away corners of the internet.
The one I’ve chosen this time is Take the Poor With You, a wonderful blog that I’ve been reading for about three years now. I smile every time my Google Reader list shows me that there’s a new post, because I know it’s going to be something good.
It’s written by Tienne, a mom of young children whom, as you can guess from the title, has a passion for helping the poor of the world. Her blog is a chronicle of her efforts to serve the poor and grow in holiness amidst the challenges of being the mom of little ones, trying to homeschool, living on a tight budget, and not being on the same page spiritually with her husband.
Her posts are always concise, honest and real. I learned so much from the time she talked about how she felt a powerful call from God to make regular donations to people suffering in Darfur…and her husband didn’t agree. She summarized her quandary in this post when she wrote: “There is money in our budget for Darfur, if we are creative and willing to sacrifice. Yet if one partner is not willing to make that sacrifice, then what?”
Tienne was stuck between wanting to honor her marriage and wanting to follow this burning call she felt. So she came up with a great idea: she’d find a way to cut her household spending — in a way that wouldn’t inconvenience her husband — and send the savings to Darfur. I was fascinated by her post where she chronicled trying to go an entire week without going to the grocery store, cooking satisfying meals from what they already had on hand. An excerpt:
I did things I’d never done before, like grate up a broccoli stalk and add it to chicken broth for our lunch. Normally I just throw the stalks out. Instead of cheese and crackers for a midafternoon snack, I popped some corn kernels. I substituted for lots of things I didn’t have and tried new recipes when my usual ones wouldn’t work. The thing that struck me the most was how much of my time I spent worrying about food, and how diligent I was at conserving it…And in so many ways, God provided.
As the experiment of finding room for the poor by cutting their expenses wore on, Tienne admitted that it was getting frustrating. And this is what I love about her blog: she didn’t gloss over the fact that it was hard. She candidly admitted that she didn’t always go through it with a halo over her head and a smile on her face. In this post she ‘fessed up that she was getting irritated about not being able to buy wine and other delicacies, and wrote:
When I choose a sacrifice, I do it with joy, but when it’s imposed upon me I am resentful, complaining, sulky and depressed. Perhaps more than anything, God wants me to learn how to do joyfully what He wants. Perhaps this is so hard for me not because I’m giving up alcohol, but because I’m giving up control.
Her funds seemed to decrease as her desire to give money to the poor increased, and the tension thickened. Then she had a big breakthrough. With inspiring humility, she wrote:
God wants me to serve the poor, of that I’m certain. He would not have put this drive in me for no purpose. The key is that I serve Him in the way HE wants, not the way I want. Some of you have touched on this in your comments to me, and I’ve really taken them to heart. I think it’s telling that my gut reaction to [blog commenter] Anna’s suggestion to step back was “But then my husband WINS.”
This isn’t the reaction of someone who’s seeking to serve God and follow His will. It’s the reaction of a hyper-controlling, uptight, Type-A personality.
My way obviously isn’t working right now, so I need to find a new way. God’s way.
I read once that the Mongols (or perhaps the Huns?) were so successful in battle because they were taught to fight like water, finding cracks in the defense and working their way through bit by bit until they overcame. This image has been churning around in my head the past week or so. I feel like my desire to help the poor is the current of a river — it’s flowing intensely within me right now, urging me on. And I keep running up against the dam of my marriage. It’s making me frustrated and swelling my resentment of my husband. The force of my drive to help is causing me harm.
Read the rest of that great post to see what insights she gained from that realization.
You can also expect heart-felt posts on other subjects as well. She’s talked about her mother’s upbringing in a small village in rural Croatia, where she lived in a house that had a woodburning stove and no running water. More recently, she wrote a heartbreaking post about the pain of the aftermath of her recent ectopic pregnancy, and her internal struggles as she realizes that homeschooling might not be a fit for her family. Her most recent post is an interesting insight about how the obstacles she’s been facing with her desire to adopt may be due in part to spiritual attack.
Through it all, she never fails to bring it all back to what really matters, and in the process inspires her readers to do the same as well. She wrote last month:
There has been a great deal of upheaval in my life, starting with the ectopic pregnancy and progressing right through discerning school options for next year, determining the relationship I will have with certain family members, and making decisions on future children. All the questions I’ve had about what God wants me to do, I have taken to Him in Adoration, and all I keep hearing in my heart is “Don’t worry,” and “This is My work.”
It IS His work. Nothing I do is my own doing. Nothing I achieve is the product of my labors…My job is not to go out there and save all the poor and downtrodden; it’s simply to embrace God’s salvation and allow it to work within me…That’s it. That’s the sum of my job on this earth. No need to control things and work myself into a lather about timing and persuading those around me to join in my efforts. Just quiet love and a joyful spirit of giving.
As with so many of her posts, all I could say to that was, “Amen.”
I hope you enjoy Tienne’s blog as much as I do. What are some of your favorite “undiscovered gem” blogs?
Undiscovered Gems: Betty Duffy
All my brainpower is going to Christmas cards today, so here’s another blog I wanted to share as part of my Undiscovered Gems series:
Betty Duffy has become one of those blogs that makes me smile every time Google Reader tells me it’s been updated. You just never know what you’re going to get with her posts — she might write about anything from her experiences with depression to her weight loss history to the quirky aspects of her childhood to realizing that her spiritual struggles have one clear solution — but whatever she writes, you know it’s going to be thoughtful and have a strong take. Her combox is great too; the discussions that follower her posts frequently get all deep and make me feel like I should stay in the shallow end of the internet (like in this post about giving up nouns for Lent.)
She also has a great way of phrasing things that perfectly encapsulates a concept, like in this post about her teen years (which had me nodding and laughing out loud):
I wanted my parents to divorce and move us all into an apartment complex too so that I could have good reason to be depressed and bitter. My happy home life did not prevent me from writing many death poems, however, and wearing the black clothes — at least when I wasn’t in that cheerleading uniform.
And in this analysis of spiritual one-upsmanship:
[My husband] just would not agree to be as Holy as I was — didn’t matter how I poked, prodded, or complained. And, being the spiritual giant that I am, I threw tantrums, deciding that if he wouldn’t be Holy then neither would I…At nearly every retreat or spiritual talk I attended, I thought, “My husband really needs to hear this” rather than “How can I apply this to my life?”
She does occasionally have PG-13 content, like when she’s doing a no-holds-barred takedown of secular morality in modern films, or writing a wry post about natural family planning. But, as she said in a recent post about how we present ourselves in our writing:
I’m not sure, however, that I can “prayerfully consider” every word I put up here. I think it might make me scrupulous and defeat anything I write before I write it…I think that what’s missing from a lot of blogs, and a lot of Christian writing is a humble and deep acceptance of God’s unconditional love and mercy. He forgives us our sins. He uses our sins for his ends. So I think we can relax our fears a little concerning writing with honesty about our lives. If the future of Christian story-telling is in the blogosphere, and I think it might be, then I would be sad if our stories were lost because we were afraid to tell them.
I hope you enjoy her posts as much as I do.