/karen/

My blogroll rocks! (Part 3)

Wednesday, 31 January, 2007

And continuing ...

I don't actually know Irene personally (though she did send me a card once and I also sent her a book) and I can't remember how I got started in reading her. I think perhaps she read me first. Or I noticed that she was commenting a lot on the blogs I read (which were Famous Christian Bloggers—most of whom I don't read now). Irene lives in Malaysia, and her writing is always engaging and very personal. Some of the things she shares with the world are things I wouldn't feel comfortable in sharing, but her honesty is very compelling and you do feel like you identify with her struggles and get to know her well through her blog. I've been praying for Irene for a while too. (I used to pray through my entire blogroll at one stage because I thought that, in linking to people, I should take the relationship seriously, and blogs are a good way of finding out how people are. And then certain people on my blogroll left the blogosphere or never talked about their lives [which meant I didn't really know what to pray for] and others joined the blogosphere so I decided not to retain the practice for new blogs I added.)

Jan is also someone I don't know (but apparently she lives nearby). I think she started reading me before I started reading her. Maybe it was in the days when Rachel was reviewing “Stars of the southern hemisphere” on Blogs4God. Anyway, because Jan started reading me, I started reading her, and I've kept it up because Jan's voice—a voice that speaks from age and experience—is quite distinctive in a cyberworld of mostly young bloggers who often rashly voice opinions without thinking about them. Plus she knits.

Jo started coming to Word by Word a year or two ago and always turned up to our meetings bearing loads of enthusiasm. I love how enthusiastic she is about my blog! This year she's started the equivalent of MTS at Sydney Uni and already she's started chronicling her experiences. I'm sure they'll be a valuable resource for others thinking about MTS.

I'm not sure why I keep Joseph on my blogroll. I've only met him once and he never blogs! He writes for Anglican Media.

Joyce is a girl I met at UNSW the year we hung out with FEVA at Mid Year Conference (2001). She was in my small group. That was the year we did the first half of Galatians for manuscript discovery (manuscript discovery is when you have the text of the Bible printed for you on a piece of paper with no verse numbers, headings or paragraphs—all you have is line numbers. Every day you work on the text by

1. highlighting repeated words and phrases;
2. thinking about how to break up the text into sections and giving them your own headings;
3. underlining imperatives (i.e. commands);
4. trying to trace the logic of the ideas throughout the entire passage;
5. summing up in just one sentence what the passage is about.

I remember manuscript discovery on Galatians as being especially rewarding. Everyone in that little group was so into it, and on the last day, we decided to read through the whole of the rest of Galatians to see how the ideas and themes we'd been studying developed in the rest of the letter.

Joyce's photo collages are awesome, plus she often links to cool design stuff and other things.

I take back what I said about Duncan. I've probably known Karen longer. But then she's been in an out of my life since I met her so perhaps it doesn't really count. I first met Karen at a young writers' day at the Rozelle Writers' Centre. Libby Gleeson and Brian Caswell were guest speakers. At the time, I was hugely into young adult fiction, but I was also incredibly shy. So when lunchtime rolled around, I looked the two but didn't have the courage to approach them. I saw Karen sitting by herself and she looked far less intimidating, so I asked if I could join her and we had a lovely time talking about books and other things. We discovered that we both loved Dead Poets' Society and that we were both Christians. After that, we wrote letters to one another. She was “The Great Sea Serpent” and I was “Brer Seal”. I even went to visit her at her parents' house one time and was impressed by her room (it was covered in Thin Ice comic strips and she actually had a blue moon cushion). And she invited me to her 18th which was a flapper party.

I spent more time with her in the real world when she came to Wollongong Uni to study Creative Writing. I actually lived with her for a short period of time before pulling out of the honours program in Wollongong and moving back to Sydney. When I was back in Wollongong for MTS, she and I used to meet up to read the Bible or watch videos together. Now her health makes socialising quite difficult and, of course, it's harder now I'm back in Sydney again.

I met Kathleen for the first time when we picked her up from the airport in Melbourne. Is it a bit rash to agree to share accommodation with someone while on holiday having never met them? Well, that's exactly what we did. Kathleen was one of Deb's friends and apparently she was quite keen to meet me. She was the one who talked me into going to my first sci-fi/fantasy convention (Continuum 3) and then walked me through the whole rather bizarre experience. We had a great time in Melbourne, going shopping, visiting the art gallery, exploring little laneways and alleys, doing handicrafts (she taught me to crochet and I've since forgotten how) and reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods journal aloud to one another every night. (It was so nice to find someone else who likes reading things aloud!) I saw her again last year briefly when she was in Sydney during our carols service (where we ate hot dogs and then went out for gelato afterwards).

Her blog is full of things I love: books, craft (Kathleen knows how to bind books! She even made me a journal which is so beautiful I keep not wanting to use it), drawings, writing (she's the only one I know who's completed National Novel Writing Month) and descriptions of delicious ways to spend one's evening.

Larissa is a UNSW girl. She came to Word by Word once while it was being run by Greg and Tony. I can't remember when I found out she had a blog. She knew because I would occasionally puts links to it in my emails to the Christians in Arts mailing list. It's great she's blogging more now (even if it's a distraction from her PhD) because she has some interesting things to say about things like philosophy and natural theology.

Lorien is married to Ben A (so please refer back to the spiel about him to find out where I met her).

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