Blogging as Ministry

Here are bullet points from Wes Daniels' Internet Cafe over at Gathering in Light about Blogging as Ministry

Blogging is an outlet for essays, thoughts, processing

Blogs are a {free} source of relegious reading material

Blogs allow for on-going conversations and friendships

Blogs track our Journey's transformation>> Blogging is timely

Blogs can express communal believing

Your blog is your "virtual living room"


RantWoman wants to add a very pointed, jump up and down with exclamation points and circles and arrows and laser pointers insistent message: RantWoman CANNOT anymore reasonably read enough print to satisfy her soul's rather boundless appetite for correction and elaboration and interaction with spiritual matters. RantWoman SOMETIMES is grateful for humans who can help her, but, well, RantWoman is an introvert and often needs to interact with matters on her own or with her own tools. RantWoman is very humble about the importance of the tools she has as way to access what she wants to read. RantWoman's real point: Blogs are ACCESSIBLE to RantWoman in ways that print is not!

RantWoman does mean to get some info into the QUIP discussions about accessible reading materials. RantWoman also realizes that as people age, the incidence of vision impairment and blindness increases and other blind Friends have different levels of comfort with different media and resources. RantWoman does not even presume to speak for them all, only hopefully to raise questions.

RantWoman further wants to note two points related to the word "free" and to remind her public of an issue of courtesy about attribution when reusing materials from others' sites.

First, "free" is an overstatement: a blogger likely is paying out fairly steadily for enough internet access to blog. The economics of what people pay and what services these costs cover are evolving rapidly and Friends should be aware of many possible changes.

Next, although much material is available for free and easy reuse, it is very minimal common courtesy to properly attribute materials one uses from other sources. RantWoman suspects there are big scary intellectual property lawyers out there willing to weigh in at some points and RantWoman is specifically not going there for today.

RantWoman is actually shy about inviting the internet all the way into her virtual living room. RantWoman also carries a concern for conversations flowing back and forth between the blogosphere and humans she loves, admires, regards as mentors, gets plum annoyed and vexed by, and in particular knows never or on very constrained timelines interact with all this e-stuff.