Blogs I Liked in February (And a Life Update)

I keeping telling myself I'm going to be a consistent blogger someday. I was doing pretty well awhile back... and then student teaching happened. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love what I'm doing. I have an amazing group of students and love working with them (and I promise I'm not just saying that for future employers who may be reading my blog). It's great to be in my senior year of college and still be sure that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

However, this experience is costing me some precious sleep. I counted up all the hours I've slept from the past Sunday night until now, and it's definitely been less than 25 hours total. This wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't commuting an hour each way. I had a couple close calls on the road this week because of not being quite alert enough to drive (meep!) so this weekend, my goal is to plan way ahead and get everything done that I need for the week. Hopefully with that done, I can get to sleep at a decent hour during the week and be awake enough to, you know, be safe and not die.

I suddenly realized this morning that it was March now, which means it's time to do a quick re-linking of a couple of the blog posts I read and loved in February. I'm quite a bit behind on my Google Reader, so the newest of these posts happened the 21st. The rest of the month gets covered in April.

Caucasian Christian Radio, by Stephen Mattson at Burnside Writers Collective. Mattson points out some of the things that are wrong with "contemporary" Christian music, and I think he's got a lot of good points here.

The Introvert Brand, by Adam S. McHugh at The Power of Introverts. Anyone who knows me knows that I love McHugh's work (he wrote Introverts in the Church), as the Power of Introverts blog, usually written by Susan Cain. This little piece muses (somewhat lightheartedly) on what happens when you start openly branding yourself an introvert.

Abandoning Evangelicalism, Part 2, by Zack Hunt at The American Jesus. His whole Abandoning Evangelicalism series is great, but this one in particular stood out to me. I do believe the Bible to be the word of God, but I think he has some very, very important points about how that can go wrong. The section starting with, "So how should the Bible function in the life of the faithful?" is my favorite.

The Münchhausen martyrdom of Rick Warren, Chuck Colson and Fr. Jonathan Morris, by Fred Clark at Slacktivist. I have very little patience with an attitude of Christian martyrdom in the United States. We have such a huge amount of religious freedom, and that freedom is hardly ever really threatened on a societal level. I'm not as harsh toward specific people as Fred Clark is, but I do agree this is the attitude of Christian evangelicalism these days, and it needs to stop.

Introverts and the people they love, by Heather at The Bar -B Brand. This is a personal anecdote by a friend of mine about a recent spontaneous visit we made together. I'm not linking it just because it mentions me or anything... but I really love how it's written. I met Heather on an online community. I have always wanted to write something about it, but it's just never come together. Heather manages to capture the fun of the whole adventure and muses on how close online friends can become. It was especially fun to read and remember a week and a half after the visit. It's a great blog post. Even if she does say "soundtrack" at one point when she means "cast recording." :-P