Everything that can possibly be said about blogging and spirituality is already written on the internet somewhere.

Same goes for blogging and politics. And blogging and family. And blogging and anything, really. Blogging is like, so 2004, and analyzing blogging is so 2005, and that means I am four years too late in writing this post…which is pretty standard for how quickly I catch on to trends. At least I’ve stopped talking about the Information Super-Highway (raise your hand if you came of age in 1997).

My husband Jack is never behind on internet trends. Which is why, before starting this post, I asked him what he thought it meant to be “a spiritual person on the net.” I hoped he could give me the 2011 answer and I, for once, would have archived proof of my coolness. Take that, The Future!

Jack got really excited, as he always does when I ask him about the internet, and started speaking in engaging, witty, and fully edited paragraphs about blogging and spirituality. I hate it when he does that. He explained that everything online is instantly open to everyone else’s response, and he called this the “Rapid Feedback Cycle.” You write, you publish, and you skip the process of meditating on your own writing because you already have 36 comments on your post (or, in my case, maybe two). Contrast this with the Apostle Paul, Jack said, who sent off a letter and six months later the church in Corinth was shocked to read that their pastor did not approve of incest and adultery. Imagine if Paul had a comments section at the end of his epistles!

This Rapid Feedback Cycle (oh please tell me someone got here by googling that phrase) is what makes blogging hard for me. What can I say that won’t be criticized, debated, or objectified? Will there be space for my voice before it’s drowned out? Will my writing be my own, or will I numbly absorb the praise and criticism in my inbox? Will my readers know that there’s flesh and a heart and tears behind my words?

I keep these questions close when I blog. I write about normal things, like what I learn at Mars Hill, or the women in my church, or how many moles my Italian ancestry gave me. But before I hit “publish,” I have to acknowledge (at least to myself) that I don’t understand this internet thing. I wish I could see the faces of the people who read my blog, and ask them why they were searching for “celebrity teeth” or “restless in marriage.” I’d like to tell them that I am not very smart and they shouldn’t listen to me, but to please still give me lots of attention and continue reading my blog. It all seems so desperate and impersonal, both on my end and theirs.

And yet, relationship still happens in the rapid feedback cycle. Sometimes I feel a stranger’s humanity as if it was radiating from my laptop. Often, in the security of that private-yet-public blog space, I write words that are truer than even my best friend could coax out of me. I don’t love the rapid feedback cycle (especially now that I know it has a name), but it might be worth dealing with.

Christine is finishing her first year at Mars Hill Graduate School, in the MACP (Master’s in Counseling Psychology) program. She blogs regularly (that means once a month) at madcheshire .

I was at church Sunday morning; a rare occurrence for me these days. As my attention span ebbed and flowed, I heard words in the Pastoral Prayer that caught me—not because they were convicting or inspirational, but because they made me mad.

The pastor alluded to our need to ask forgiveness for paying more attention to email, cell phones, and blogging than scripture, prayer, and service. I am still mad.

It’s not the first time I’ve considered it—the connection between my spirituality and blogging; but that prayer got me to thinking (and blogging—God, forgive me) in a more concise way. The two are not, nor should they be, mutually exclusive. And for me, they have served and enhanced one another in powerful, transformative ways. I would go so far as to say that blogging has become a manifestation of my spirituality—my prayer.

I have known many seasons, frankly many years, in which my spirituality has been sterile, isolated, hard work. It has been taught and understood as a discipline with specific activities and manifestations that somehow mark or define me as a Christian. But blogging has not felt anything like this. It has been a gift. The antithesis of sterile, segmented, hard work, it is messy, integrated, and life-giving. Call me crazy, but this seems far more consistent with what spirituality ought to be about, how it ought to be defined, experienced and “practiced.”

Mary Oliver’s poetry never fails to speak to me, to express something in words and imagery that I otherwise could not. Her poem, Five a.m. in the Pinewoods is no exception. Consider these three lines:

So this is how you swim inward,
So this is how you flow outward,
So this is how you pray.

She captures what blogging and spirituality have become for me: rhythm, movement, breathing, introspection, expression, ever-shifting currents. So this is how I pray; this is my spirituality—articulated and lived: I blog.

Blogging has created this vast and expansive context through which I can express my thoughts. Sometimes they are deeply profound or heart-wrenching. Other times they are silly and irreverent. And often they are just whimsical, hopefully thoughtful collections of what is going on in my head and heart. My blog posts are ways in which my spirituality is made manifest, ways in which I both speak and listen, am heard and spoken to.

“Wherever we may come alive, that is the area in which we are spiritual.” (David Steindl-Rast)

Blogging invites me again and again to come alive – to live boldly, out loud, and in truth. Blogging is a space in which I can dream, think, imagine, process, lament, and grieve. That is spiritual. That is prayer.

So this is how I pray. Not like the pastor in Sunday’s service—calling me to “higher” forms of spirituality; but in the virtual world, on a screen, through my keyboard, in the heads and hearts of those who read what I write, reaching the eyes, ears, and heart of God, experiencing life—abundantly.

I’m not as mad as I was on Sunday. Writing this post definitely helped. It reconnected me with what I know to be true, what I know brings me life. Indeed, it is my prayer. So this is how I pray.

Ronna Detrick Miller received her MDiv from MHGS in 2004 and then served on staff until March, 2009. She is now launching her own business: Renegade Conversations through which she offers coaching, spiritual direction, consulting, and speaking on ways that women and the systems within which they live and work can be reimagined, recreated, and restored.

I am astonished by the pages upon pages I’ve written for school papers that only one pair of eyes usually ends up seeing.

One time in my undergraduate, after writing a 15 page research paper, I randomly inserted a sentence two-thirds in that said, “If you’re actually still reading this, can you make note of it at the end?” To my amusement, (and embarrassment,) sure enough, the professor wrote, “nice try, I read it all.”

My desire to know that someone is actually reading what I write gets to a core human issue of futility: Does anything I do really matter? If I write myself onto a page, will I be engaged? Will I move anyone? Do I trust that if I’m real when I write, readers will actually enjoy what I have to say?

I sometimes buy into a myth that suggests that everyone else’s lives are invariably sexier and more purposeful than my own. Who would want to read about my life? Speaking from my own experience, to share my own story, no matter how tragic, mundane, or uncool it is– it’s risky, to say the least. Of course there are others who can write, review, and photograph better than me. And yet, I believe that offering small portions of my life to those who desire to read, shows us something of our dignity, humanity, and value.

I have an artist friend who puts her “in process” and unfinished artwork on her blog. Some galleries prefer that their artists don’t present their work in this medium, because in their eyes, it creates a diluted version of the real thing. Which leaves me asking: “what is the real thing?”

I think my artist friend is on to something: it’s about where we are in the process of this thing we call life– When I blog, what I offer is raw, unpolished, and in progress. This is what I’ve found: people are moved.

Jamie is a recent graduate from the Counseling Psychology program. She blogs and shares her photography regularly at her personal blog.

I am astonished by the pages upon pages I’ve written for school papers that only one pair of eyes usually ends up seeing.

One time in my undergraduate, after writing a 15 page research paper, I randomly inserted a sentence two-thirds in that said, “If you’re actually still reading this, can you make note of it at the end?” To my amusement, (and embarrassment,) sure enough, the professor wrote, “nice try, I read it all.”

My desire to know that someone is actually reading what I write gets to a core human issue of futility: Does anything I do really matter? If I write myself onto a page, will I be engaged? Will I move anyone? Do I trust that if I’m real when I write, readers will actually enjoy what I have to say?

I sometimes buy into a myth that suggests that everyone else’s lives are invariably sexier and more purposeful than my own. Who would want to read about my life? Speaking from my own experience, to share my own story, no matter how tragic, mundane, or uncool it is– it’s risky, to say the least. Of course there are others who can write, review, and photograph better than me. And yet, I believe that offering small portions of my life to those who desire to read, shows us something of our dignity, humanity, and value.

I have an artist friend who puts her “in process” and unfinished artwork on her blog. Some galleries prefer that their artists don’t present their work in this medium, because in their eyes, it creates a diluted version of the real thing. Which leaves me asking: “what is the real thing?”

I think my artist friend is on to something: it’s about where we are in the process of this thing we call life– When I blog, what I offer is raw, unpolished, and in progress. This is what I’ve found: people are moved.

Jamie is a recent graduate from the Counseling Psychology program. She blogs and shares her photography regularly at her personal blog.

In the novel, The Giver by Lois Lowry, one young boy named Jonas can see color in a world of people who can only see in black and white. He is isolated and lonely, stuck in a situation in which he is unable to share his gift of vision with those in his life. Much of the time, I feel like Jonas.

Often, it seems as if I am stuck trying to communicate to others what red looks like when all they can see is another shade of dull grey. I often wonder, what is it that keeps people from seeing the colors around them? Is it laziness? Fear? Are they just permanently incapable of seeing more than they already see?

It can be so difficult at times, to see beauty where others only see boredom, to feel passion where so many seem resigned to passivity. I long to strive towards a life of intensity, but it seems like most are content to live lives of indifference.

In The Giver, the other people in Jonas’ life were incapable of seeing color. Through a combination of desire, fear, and genetic engineering, it was simply impossible for anyone else to see more than they did. Is it similar in this world? Is seeing the world well a unique gift? Is it something that only certain people can do? If so, it would seem like those who can see are doomed to lives of isolation.

My suspicion is that in reality seeing well is both a unique gift and an acquired skill. There are certainly people who can see better than most. The greatest art, whether it be novels, paintings, films, poetry, song or whatever else, is the result of people who see some aspect of the world clearly and can articulate that vision in a unique way. Their vision is a special gift. Yet, when the rest of us are willing to encounter that vision with an open mind we can learn to see in new ways ourselves.

In my life, especially in my time so far at MHGS , I am surrounded by people who have learned to see in color. Some see colors I have enjoyed and cherished myself for a long time, while others see colors I had never imagined before these remarkable people taught me how to start seeing them for myself.

Each of us, when we see something which strikes us as meaningful or beautiful, should share that vision. It can certainly be painful when others refuse to listen, when the people we attempt to share with stubbornly insist that the world is devoid of color, or perhaps only painted with colors already familiar and comfortable. Yet, this pain cannot keep us from trying to offer the world a glimpse of how we see, and hopefully, to do so with grace and humility, understanding how difficult it can be to learn to see in new ways.

Somehow, blogging is one outlet I have discovered for offering others the colors I see all around me. It is a way I can share the way I see things, hoping to offer the gift beauty gives to me as a shared gift for others to appreciate. My hope is that people might be blessed by the things I see, but that they also might learn to see in new ways through what I write. I also hope they might respond, thus offering how they see things to me so that I might learn to see in new ways myself. It’s part of the beautiful mystery that somehow, imagination and clarity of vision multiply exponentially when they are shared with the imagination and vision of others.

Scott Small is a second-year MDiv student at MHGS. He blogs regularly at Gloaming and Dawn as well as The Other Journal . Scott loves to have deep conversations about movies and culture and their impact on the church.

The word blog is incredibly nuanced in my opinion. It doesn’t hold a single meaning, but rather layers upon layers of meaning, all depending on the content.

Food blogs. Celebrity blogs. Dog blogs. Stop blogging about your dog. No, but really. Stop it. Ending personal angst: now. Mom blogs. Art blogs. Travel blogs. Gossip blogs. If you can think of it, there’s a blog dedicated to it somewhere.

But my favorite blogs have little to do with content; it’s almost always the context to which I’m drawn. It’s when the writer shows up, when she brings herself. It’s when I can sense her sitting behind her computer somewhere, allowing herself to be fully present in her words. If authenticity seeps from every letter, then I’m hooked. Maybe he’s writing about preparing his favorite curry dish, the detail of each ingredient, the colors and how the smells take him back to that particular day when he was 15, and his mother was teaching him how to get a feel for just the right amount of spice. Or maybe she’s telling a story about when she was driving up Highway 101 on the coast, taking in the breeze, stopping every few hours to take snapshots of the ocean. And she knew that the photographs couldn’t capture what was happening at that exact moment, but they would always stir up the memory, and that’s what she wanted to preserve as much as possible.

I’m a sucker for a good story, and even more so if the author is present in his or her words. Likewise, if the author seems absent, or if the words feel contrived, then I become absent as a reader. But if she flows authentically through her words, then it doesn’t matter what she writes about. I want to read it. It’s through the experiences of others that I often learn about my own. As a human, I have a deep need to relate, to feel another’s presence. I want to know that I’m not alone, that others are in it as well, even if their story is very different from my own.

Mars Hill Graduate School has taught me what it means to be fully present, or maybe more honestly present. I have learned what it means to take steps towards true presence. Yes, I’ve written papers, read books, and given presentations with the goal of getting a degree, but my hope from all of these things is to become a better man, to have meaningful relationships, and to love well.

It’s been the students, my friends and peers, that have taught me the most. They’ve inspired me to strive to be authentic in every endeavor, whether it’s blogging, graduate school, or having a good conversation with a friend over a cup of Seattle coffee. I am learning to be comfortable with myself, to be honest and vulnerable, and to value others more deeply as my time at Mars Hill Graduate School continues. I am here for a degree, but I am also here for so much more.

Joshua Longbrake is a 2nd year MDiv student at Mars Hill Graduate School and a photographer who posts his images and writings on his personal blog. He highly recommends having a cup of Zoka Coffee when you visit Seattle, Washington.