This is double-posted at my two public blogs: When We Fast and St. Herman School.
Christ is Risen!!
I'm going to be taking a break from this blog for a while. I've been contemplating my own smallness, failures and brokenness lately, fueled partly by the experience of the Paschal season, but more just by facing life's realities. And in the midst I've this experience, I've also been complaining about the terrible narcissism of the university students I teach. This has led me to consider the ways in which my own narcissism is fed by blogging, and the ways that my own loneliness is magnified in the same process.
I often receive much encouragement and good ideas from reading blogs. But I also find myself feeling sad and discouraged. Why doesn't my living room look like that? Why am I not that organized? Why did God give him/her that and me this? Of course, no blogger means to make me feel like that. And, of course, I don't mean to make others feel like that. But I wonder if I might do that very thing sometimes. I know the at least part of the whole truth about the real me (for who can truly plumb the depths of the soul?), but it's more fun to write about the pretty side of the real me. Who wants to write about their failures and their brokenness? At least, who wants to write about it openly on the internet? But where should my focus be: my successes or my shortcomings? I know what the Fathers of the Church would say in answer to that question.
So, for now, I'll take a break to meditate upon my own brokenness which is more painfully evident each new day. I'll keep up my private blogs and may even save away some new posts for this blog. But, I'm going quiet for a while. It will leave a bit more time to read another book to the kids, or to meet the challenges and joys of face-to-face relationships.
At least at this point, I plan to leave my archived posts up here. And I'll keep receiving comments from the blog in my email. So, feel free to contact me via this blog, or other ways that you know how to reach me. I'll likely return to blogging here, but I'm not sure when or how.
May the Joy of the Risen Christ fill you each day!
