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.
Undiscovered gems: The Philosopher Mom
The first blog I want to introduce you to for my Undiscovered Gems series is The Philosopher Mom. I just love the way she shares her extensive knowledge of philosophy and theology and makes it all relevant to the everyday life of a mom. Her blog first became a favorite when she did a series of posts about Teresa of Avila’s “mansions” of the soul, from which I gained so much great knowledge about spiritual growth (the first post is here, the entire series is here).
Her writing has become an even greater source of inspiration for me lately, however, as she candidly discusses her struggles with a hyperemesis gravidarum pregnancy, where she is so sick that her children have had to go live with her mother for a while. Her simple, two-paragraph post about prayer during suffering had me wiping tears from my eyes; I thought her reflections on how openness to life is a call to all of us, even people not currently having kids, were nothing short of profound; and her stirring thoughts on what she’d learned about self-control vs. obedience were a major “ah-hah!” moment for me.
She also hit the nail on the head when she wrote about fear and having kids, why we should read fiction and the life lessons she learned in 2008.
A big “thank you!” to the Philosopher Mom for all her great posts, and I hope you all enjoy browsing through her writing as much as I do!
Undiscovered Gems
I’m going to start a completely sporadic series of posts where I highlight some of my favorite “undiscovered gem” blogs, i.e. blogs that have excellent content but that might not be considered big in terms of having tons of traffic. (The random criteria I came up with to define “undiscovered” is if it has fewer than 100 Google Reader subscribers.)
I’ve wanted to do this for a while, since so often I’ll be reading something on my feed reader and think, “This blog is so good! More people need to be reading it!” Also, I’ve had various blogs going back to 2004, and I’ve always noticed that it seems like a lot of blogs that do have a fair amount of traffic primarily link to other high-traffic blogs, and when you’re not “one of them” you start to feel like you’re stuck in some kind of small blog ghetto. Or maybe that’s just me.
Anyway, I’m not sure how often I’ll do these posts — maybe once or twice a month? — but I hope that you all enjoy these glimpses into some of my favorite undiscovered gems in the online world!