"Preach the Gospel Always. If Necessary Use Words"

St. Francis of Assisi spoke those wise words and Jen at "Et tu" confirms them. However, in Jen's case, she went looking for words as her exploration of Christianity consisted of the blogosphere.

So, in typical me fashion, I turned to the internet. I had no idea how one would go about finding blogs by practicing Catholics, so I just Googled stuff like "Catholic mom blog", "Catholic blog", "Christian mom blogs", etc. It took me a while to find what I was looking for, but I finally found a few blogs written by Catholic and other Christian women. I added them to my bookmarks, sat back, and read. I almost never commented. I just quietly watched their lives unfold, like an anthropologist studying a new culture. Almost everything they did was so foreign to me -- they casually mentioned praying about this or that, wrote about the goings on at their churches, discussed how they turned to God in tough times and disappointment, etc. I had never known anyone who did things like this (at least not that they shared with me), so I was fascinated.

I didn't really realize it at the time, but as I would read these blogs, in the back of my mind I always though, "This is what it means to be a Christian" or, "This is what Catholic mothers are like." I didn't exactly intend to hold these authors up as the very definition of their religion, but since I didn't know any other people from their religion they were all I had to go by.

She then goes on in her thoughtful way (which is why her blog is one of my "must reads") to muse about Christian responsibility in blogging to give a good example. Which sets up a good conversation in her comments box about honesty in blogging and other issues.

It made me think of the fact that being a blogger makes me a better Christian. Funny sounding isn't it? But if I can't be honest on the blog then I'm not gonna do it. And I have to live my life in a way I can write about and share. Sadly, this means that when I miss the mark sometimes I do it right here with snarky posts or comments ... and then I've gotta live with that too. Oh, it's so good for my humility!

It also was a great compliment (and humbling) to find out at the end of the post that Happy Catholic was one of those blogs Jen was watching to see what Christians are like. So the other lesson is ... you never know who's watching or why! I read all but one of the other blogs she mentioned and agree that you can honestly see people living their faith there.

Good stuff. Thanks Jen!