Walking and Not Talking

Lately, I have been in a blogging funk. You may or may not have noticed, but my output is not up to my own standards. Artists are usually pretty harsh on their own work, but trust me - I am no artist, so why then do I critique myself and bemoan my posts if no one is getting hurt in the process? Or are they?

What we blog is what we believe?

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Bloggers blog, and readers read. Sometimes those lines are crossed a bit, and people do a little bit of both. The blogging world can sometimes seem like a closed off little world where everyone knows everyone, at least in the online sense, and we start to think and write based on what we read. This really is a spiritual exercise, regardless of how good or bad that might be. So as we read and write more, we shape our spirituality. They say, "You are what you eat." The Church has its own saying, Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi - The Law of Prayer is the Law of Belief, or more colloquially "What we pray, is what we believe." It is a statement that is supposed to be illustrative or reflective of who we are. That is why in the blogging world, what we blog, is what we believe. 


This is true not only of what we write, but also what we read. We often find ourselves not only preaching to the choir, but reading the choir's notes as well. Now, this isn't always a bad thing, and I am not suggesting we go and read some dissident blog just to get a different perspective, or to "be open minded." That never really works, and it usually only ends up reinforcing what we already believe, and that being the case, we would be much better served reading something more efficacious that will sharpen our understanding, something more on our line of thinking.

Walk the Walk

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What I do propose is that we worry more about "Walking the Walk." Talking, writing, blogging, these things are easy because they are like the hypothesis in an experiment. They are our beliefs in theoretical form. It isn't that we don't truly believe these things, or that they aren't true, but they are theoretical in the sense that while they are what we believe, they aren't what we pray, they aren't our Lex Orandi until we actually do them. 


I thought of all this while thinking about St. Therese. Oddly, I find her spirituality very inspiring and helpful. I say oddly, because I would never have considered that possible, prior to reading her. I feel I am much more... well, militant. I guess that others do as well. While thinking about her "Story of a Soul", and also thinking about and being envious of certain bloggers writing abilities, I realized that my blog won't get me to heaven. I don't have to write a certain number of posts, or even get a certain number of blog hits. My blog might prevent me from getting to heaven though, so I better be careful.

No, blogging is a spiritual exercise at best. But the real test, the real experiment, is how I execute what I write about in real life. The greatest bloggers in the world can have the best way of saying what they believe, but until they put the Lex Orandi first, well then it doesn't really mean a thing. Now, you may say, "But Joe, doesn't what they believe form the roots, or the basis for what they do?" Well, of course it does, but until they are put into action, they are merely ideas or beliefs.

Take St. Therese as an example. Her "Story" isn't amazing simply because of what it says, but because it is reflective of what she did. It was a true story of true action. It wasn't aspirational, but actual. Look at all the celebrity priests that have had struggles in the past year. Their words were moving, gripping if you will, and they are still true even after their speakers stumbled and fell. Yet, their is a tarnish to many of them, and a crack in their foundation. It isn't that what they said became less true, it is the fact that because of what they did, what they said became harder to hear.

Maybe I am not making any sense, but I really needed to write this. Sometimes I feel like I come of as really holier than thou, and I don't want that. I write this blog, and have for the past two years because I want to become a better Catholic. I want to grow closer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I want to be a better person and I can't do that alone. So when I write about things that are wrong, or bad, or hard, or heretical, it isn't because I am talking down. I don't write about wrongs or rights from a place of superiority, but instead I write about them so that we can use them as our hypothesis. The real test is when we try and do what St. Therese did, and walk the walk... not just talk the talk.

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