It was a good, long, time.
It was no too-busy-to-post stretch either. It was an intentional hiatus from blogland, both writing and reading, that lasted from Ash Wednesday to yesterday, Easter. It was a lenten discipline. And as far as those disciplines go, it was beneficial. With the time he had been spending cycling through blogs and looking for things to post about, NPH substituted a good deal more book and magazine reading. The Christian Century had some great pieces, as did the Presbyterian Outlook, including this one by San Francisco Theological Seminary President Phil Butin.
As far as book reading goes, NPH got stuck into an Emergent YS publication, "The Out of Bounds Church?" by Steve Taylor, as well as Stephen Fowl's "Engaging Scripture," Lewis Mumford's "Technics and Civilization," and Kenda Creasy Dean's "Practicing Passion." Did NPH finish any of those books yet? No. But we're squarely engaged in all of them.
Oh, and we re-watched, in about 20 minute increments, our favorite movie ever.
As we've found with other lenten abstentions (most notably coffee and car radio), staying away from blogs and blogging actually takes away the appetite for it. You get to where you don't miss it. And so when you start it up again you're quite conscious about it, and you tell yourself that you're not going to let it come to dominate your life and attention as it had before. All the while, you know that it probably will.
Perhaps it's a step in the right direction that NPH refused to get back on the blog this morning until he had left the house and gone to a nearby coffeeshop.
Or maybe that's just what we're telling ourselves. In any case, good to be back.
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