Bloggy Linky Goodness
Ages ago, I briefly tried putting up a weekly list of links to interesting things I was reading. But consistency isn’t really my thing. My week had 8 days in it and all it take for me to forget what I’m doing is walking through a doorway. But, part of the whole blogging/social media experience is building connections with others and promoting eachother’s work. Even for us introverts. So, I’ve decided to go ahead and try the weekly linky thing again. ‘Cuz I always enjoy other people’s linky roundups and I’m always thinking I need to pass on something I’ve read. But I’m going to need your help. If you have a blog post you’d like me to include – your own or someone else’s, please email the link to ratrotter73@yahoo.com or use the form on my contact page to send it to me. Not only will it get your link in front of a couple thousand people, a steady trickle of submissions will help offset my tendency to forget what I’m supposed to be doing.
So without further ado – here’s some awesomeness you should go read:
Living in a Desert is Bad For You Most of us have been enduring record heat this past week. Here’s a post I enjoyed from someone living where the weather sucks everyday. Whenever my husband is out of work (a regular ocurrence over the last 7 years), I tell him to please try to avoid taking a job in the southwest. Not that beggars can be choosers, but it just seems like the height of hubris to willingly live somewhere that is clearly not meant for human habitation. Turns out my instincts were probably right.
Everyone Is Faking It Over at Great Smitten Faith reminds us of a great truth of life: you aren’t the only one who fakes confidence; we’re all doing it. Remembering that we’re all winging it makes it much easier to just suck it up and do life, I think.
Haiku Heaven A couple of lovely haikus from Teacher as Transformer. And this picture I adore.
Life Is a Highway – A woman after my own heart, Adelle Gabriellson, contemplating the reality that sometimes in life – even (especially?) the lives of faithful people – there are not just bad days or weeks or months, but bad years. Yup. My mom told me recently about her bad decade. But it’s still all good.
The Challenges of Spiritual Simplicity Carl McColman wonders if our physically cluttered lives aren’t emblematic of spiritual clutter as well. This post made me think about how my own experience of God continually becomes more subtle and simple. The complicated part is letting go of all the stuff I’m sure I’ll miss in order to not crowd that ever stiller and smaller voice out. I think that most of us are facing a similar problem here in the physical world as well; we hold onto things because it’s hard to imagine we won’t miss them and that what is left will be enough.
The Duggar Family Doesn’t Go to the Beach, and Why That’s Bad For Their Kids I really enjoyed this post about the problems created by the embrace of so-called modesty among some of the more restrictive branches of the Christian community. I’ve been meaning to write a post about the problems that our embrace of duality – spiritual good, physical bad – create in our theology and our lives. This post does a good job of exploring the negative effects of one form of this heretical ideology. It’s by Sierra over at The Phoenix and The Olive Branch whose whole blog is wonderful, thoughtful goodness.
The Aid Bitchslap This is an older post from These New Boots that I’ve been meaning to share ever since I read it. Like months later I still remembered having read it and wanting to share it – it’s that good. It’s a great post about the struggles, hard realities and new perspectives gained from spending a year and a half working in Haiti. HT: The Shotgun Shack
What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate A short post by Bible Study Geek pin-pointing a failure to understand metaphore as the core of so much bad bible interpretation and its accompanying crap theology. (I once took a couple of pages to list all of the possible meanings of the word “grok” and thought about the theological implications. The Bible Study Geek would get that, I think. LOL)
A Meditation: Obedience That Transforms Bob Holmes at The Mountain Morning Cafe contemplates the paradox of freedom and adventure that comes from living in obedience to God. A topic that is near and dear to my heart. And he explains it using far fewer words than I ever could.
And finally – not a blog post, but a story from Rolling Stone Magazine that brought me to tears: The Sharp, Sudden Decline of America’s Middle Class. A profile of several people using a Safe Parking program in Santa Barbara, CA to live in their cars. All of them were solidly responsible middle class people until the Great Recession hit. I’m afraid we’re going to be seeing more and more of this in the next few years.
Have a blog post you’re especially proud of? Read a blog post you think everyone should read? Let me know! Send the link to ratrotter73@yahoo.com or use the contact form here to let me know and I’ll see if I can include it in next week’s Bloggy Linky Goodness.
Pass It On!
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