thinking bloggers

Clearly, we're all in need of a nam-shub to put a stop to these viral memes! However, this seems like a fairly benign virus to have contracted, and it's nice to have an excuse for promoting some folks whose blogs I read devotedly, and to say thanks in return for the compliment of reading rudetruth. Especially since this blog is such a hodgepodgy mess of whatever; to think that people might find such a blog thought-provoking despite itself is really quite gratifying.

In an effort to keep this from becoming too terribly incestuous, I have decided that it should be off-limits to name Krister and Scott, but everyone should know that they are among the thinkingest bloggers around.



And in no particular order:

1. Feminary. TKP led me to this blog a couple years ago, and I have been a devoted fan ever since. When I first began reading, Feminarian was in the middle of an incredibly honest investigation into sexuality and Christianity. It was an amazing time to discover this blog, and the honesty that was so arresting regarding this intimate topic is a consistent characteristic of all Feminarian's musings.
   
2. The hermits at Hermit's Rock. Reading this blog makes me wish fervently that I'd been less of a hermit myself while at Harding with these guys. This blog is eclectic, intellectual, consistently novel, and best of all, they've been eschewing their gender since 2003.
3. Jeff Sharlet's Call Me Ishmael. I just found this one a few months ago, but Sharlet is an amazing writer whose articles on American religion are insightful and riveting, and his work on The Revealer keeps us all up-to-date on what craziness is current. His blog is, he says, "Unrevised reviews of things I saw, heard, thought about. The stuff that saves me from working" but I find such ramblings intriguing.
4. Joe at Brooklyn and Beyond. Sometimes Joe blogs about baseball, which doesn't inspire much thought for me (though I assume it must for some people?). This blog is more personal than political, theological, or ideological, but it never fails to make me consider the world anew. Except when it's about baseball.
5. Casey at Workers of the World. Casey has a prophetic gift/curse of empathy. A social worker in NYC, Casey knows a lot about stuff that I don't, and she is one of the people I depend on to keep me from unwittingly becoming satisfied with being a typical American ignorant parasite. Plus, Casey led me to 3BT, a blog which makes one think in a whole alternative mode: a true gift.
   

Those are my five, but I also want to add a couple blogs I've noticed recently and am developing loyalties to: Mark Wiebe's Yankee Spoutings, which I found through his wife Jocelyn, and Indie's The world is too much with us. And I have to mention GKB, of whom I have been a regular reader for awhile, whose provocative posts make a lot of people think who then go make comments which often make me mad.

Boy, wouldn't it be nice if I could have nominated someone from the category "blogs of people related to me"...but those people would have to actually, you know, post something more often than twice a year. I am certain, however, that they do think more than twice a year, but it appears that such lofty thoughts are not for the likes of us spectres of the blogosphere.