Showing posts with label blogs i liked. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogs i liked. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Blogs I Liked In March

I went BLOG-READIN' CRAZY in March. Or at least people wrote a lot of good stuff. So here are a few of the ones I read and particularly enjoyed.

More Silly

I Want To Have a Beer With This Guy at Failbook. This guy writes the most interesting Facebook statuses ever.

Then I Went To Hell by John Shore over at JohnShore.com. Despite how the title sounds, this is a silly post making fun of a silly church sign. I love his long list of possible future signs.

Till Undeath Do Us Part, Part 5 from Not Always Romantic. This absolutely sounds like something I would accidentally say.

Ring By Spring or Your Money Back at Stuff Christians Like. As someone who was single at a Christian college for 2 years and is now in a relationship at a Christian college... this is all completely accurate. And occasionally infuriating. :-)

We Don't Need Another HTML Hero by You Suck At Craigslist. I know I instantly want to hire this guy to make me a web site.

More Serious (complete with quotes from my favorite part of the blog)

Santorum Exposes the Real Republican Party by Andrew Sullivan at The Dish. My favorite part is this section of comments down toward the end:
. . . beneath Christianism is a deep fear of the human mind - as if they actually believe that reason is stronger than religion and therefore must be restrained. As if the human mind can will God out of existence. . . . . There is a reason [Santorum] doesn't want many kids to go to college.
A prayer that included an appeal for divine help “to be kind” ceased to have anything to do with either kindness or prayer once it became an established, state-sanctioned symbol of privilege for a particular sect.
You're Not Alone, You're Lonely by Sarah Kidd at Introverted Church
I discovered that in my new language, Hindi, there is no distinction between the words “alone” and “lonely”. I felt like crying.
No Solitude, No Revelation by Susan Cain at The Power of Introverts
(Quoting Rabbi David Wolpe) Those of us who stand on the side at the party, or prefer not to go, do not devalue others. We just find that we can be truest to them when we have stored up quiet moments in the private reservoir that nourishes our souls.
Lord of the Introverts by Adam S. McHugh at Introverted Church
I realized that the two central characters of Tolkien's hobbit tales - Bilbo and Frodo - show some of the most introverted tendencies in the books, which is what makes their stories so compelling. They did not choose their adventures or their missions, they were chosen for them. They were small, short, unlikely, uninteresting creatures who tilled gardens and smoked pipes, but they became central figures in the plot to save the world from evil.
Twilight: Lying Liars Who Lie by Ana Mardoll at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings
[Bella is] cynical and quietly manipulative, and while I was able to give that behavior a pass when it seemed like a survival strategy, it's another thing entirely when she's pumping a young boy for information about an older boy that she intends to chase after just as soon as she gets what she needs from the younger one.

. . . Bella Swan is far, far more guilty of betrayal than anything Edmund Pevensie ever did.
This is a very common meme in the world of male-female relationship advice . . . Women want to be loved, men want to be respected, because to men, love is respect is love. . . .

Okay, I have readers with ladyparts: Are any of you capable of feeling loved while simultaneously feeling disrespected by the same person? How would that even work?
15 Reasons I Left Church by Rachel Held Evans
2. I left the church because when we talked about sin, we mostly talked about sex.

6. I left the church because sometimes I doubt, and church can be the worst place to doubt.

10. I left the church because of my own selfishness and pride.
Fox News Ruins a Life, Right Up to the End by Fred Clark at Slacktivist
I wouldn’t say Fox News is directly responsible for this woman’s death, although her allegiance to their fear-mongering and lies certainly contributed to her not getting the medical attention she needed.

But set aside the role Fox News played in her death and consider the role it played in her life. Watching Fox News made this poor woman miserable. She lived in needless terror, troubled by a constant anxiety that was manufactured and fabricated by political operatives posing as journalists.
Will You Always Believe In Jesus, Mama? by an anonymous guest blogger at Rachel Held Evans' site
My six year old had just confirmed this very sentiment. In the end, he wasn’t opposed to believing in Jesus, he was just sorely disappointed that no one seemed to show up when he really needed it. So he thought that perhaps something else would work better and started looking. I pray that as he searches, that he will find answers that speak to his heart, engage his mind, and soothe his soul. I pray that he will understand that following Jesus doesn’t always feel like we’re glowing, just growing.

Friday, March 2, 2012

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