Weblogs for Spiritual Journaling

Paper by Ruth Mason

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This is a note of some of the discussion arising during the ‘Weblogs and Spiritual Journaling’ workshop at the ‘Extending Connections’ conference on the Quaker use of IT held in York, April 11-13th 2003.

What is a weblog?

Weblogs connect people together using the Web through common interests. They are personal web publishing spaces which can be created by any individual with access to a computer and web browser using simple-to-use, automated publishing tools that can be accessed through the web and do not require any special technical skills.

The simplest definition of a weblog is a webpage which contains a list of dated entries and is published by an individual, like a diary.

Originally these grew out of a wish by some individuals to comment on the media and were of a ‘filter-style’ - people selected snippets of information or web links, published them on their weblog, and then wrote their own comments about that information.

Such Weblogs (or ‘blogs’) grew up out of the hope for using the World Wide Web as a democratic space where individual people could have a voice. Weblogs are still used in this way today and are now, in their turn, used as an information source by the media: for example, the now famous ‘Salem Pax’ weblog maintained by a person in Baghdad and used by The Guardian in its coverage of the Iraq war.

More information on the history of filter-style weblogs can be seen at weblogs.com.

Lately another type of weblog has evolved. The ‘journal-style’ weblog focuses around a person’s individual reflections and may not be prompted by an external snippet of information.

They are more personal and tend not to be lists of links, as the filter-style pages may be (the Salem Pax blog is really a mix of both styles). Also, there is now a concept of ‘personal web publishing communities’ - where a number of people read each others blogs, and share and maintain a connection with each others lives through that means.

The weblogs.com site gives a useful explanation of personal web publishing communities, illustrated with the example of the World AIDS Day community.

In many ways weblog technology offers similar easy publishing functions to online forums or egroups, with the major difference being that what they provide is more in the nature of a reflective space for the individual, rather than being a busy discussion board.

How might Weblogs be used for Spiritual Journaling?

The nature of journal-style weblogs in particular appears to lend itself to this purpose. In ‘Weblogs: A History and Perspective’ Rebecca Blood makes some interesting reflections on her experience of using weblogs. She notes with surprise that it was:

‘[a] profound experience … lacking a focus on the outside world, the blogger is compelled to share his world with whomever is reading … He may reflect on a book he is reading, or the behavior of someone on the bus. He might describe a flower that he saw … on his way to work … Or he may simply jot notes about his life. … Over months [these fragments] can provide an unexpectedly intimate view of what it is to be a particular individual in a particular place at a particular time.’

She shows that blogs can be a reflective space for the individual within the community:

‘The blogger, by virtue of simply writing down whatever is on his mind, will be confronted with his own thoughts and opinions. A community of 100 or 20 or 3 people may spring up around the public record of his thoughts. Being met with friendly voices, he may gain more confidence in his view of the world.’

She notes an impact that many who maintain a spiritual Journal report:

‘… this new awareness of his inner life may develop into a trust in his own perspective … and [he] will begin to act in accordance with his inner voice instead. Ideally, he will become less reflexive and more reflective …’

The traffic is not only one-way. Readers of other people’s weblogs may also benefit:

‘Reading the views of other ordinary people, they will readily question and evaluate what is being said. Doing this, they may begin a similar journey of self-discovery and intellectual self-reliance.’

Weblogs offer the opportunity for Quakers to publish to the web from their personal perspectives, rather than institutionally or corporately as on, for example, a yearly meeting website.

By showing how Quakerism sits within our individual lives - as well as showing all the other ‘hats’ we wear in being our selves - weblogs may provide a unique outreach tool.

As the wealth of existing weblogs attest, the weblog journal is about recording the everyday, the detail of our lives: an alternative and a supplement to the generic monolithic identities as pacifists or social campaigners which may be the main images those outside of Quakerism have of us.

Many Quakers find resonance with the idea of life as a journey and in common with all forms of journal, weblogs provide the possibility to record this.

For the blogger this may trace out a path otherwise unperceived, remind him/her of things of value they might have forgotten, or remind him/her that difficult spots have been got out of before.

For the reader there may be the comfort of recognising a common experience. It was commented in our workshop, as in Rebecca Blood’s reflections, that many find writing a journal a confidence-building experience.

In contrast to the instantaneous/last-minute culture of parts of the commercial World Wide Web, weblogs - with their areas to archive postings - may value precisely that mapping of change which rejects the notion that if it is not new it is not valuable.

Weblogs may also be anonymous, or use an alias; and some find the non-interactive, written space a safer place to start discussing concerns with others which they might not be happy to raise in a face-to-face meeting.

In common with other forms of electronic communication weblogs also offer the possibility of community at a distance, offering support or solidarity to those who may be isolated by geography or, as in the case of Salem Pax, to those whose freedom of movement is curtailed by circumstance. Perhaps the quarterly printed journal-letters of Quaker overseas workers could be supplemented by weblogs?

Further Questions to be Explored

The workshop raised a key issue. Unlike a private spiritual pen-&-paper journal a weblog is published into a public space.

Is the primary purpose of such weblogs to support the journaler, the journaler’s Quaker community, or the wider public? - depending how it is variously conceived the nature of the weblog changes.

The workshop group felt that while a weblog may inevitably be different to a private journal, its capacity to communicate as inreach within the community or as outreach into the wider public made it potentially a valuable complementary tool.

However, the personal nature of weblogs still means that the balance between these different focuses may be hard to find: while some welcomed the greater freedom of expression that anonymity or use of an alias might afford, others felt strongly that this sat awkwardly with the testimony to openness and with the challenging opportunity offered to have the courage to witness at a personal level.

These approaches have each their value in different ways and it may simply be a matter of personal choice to find the right balance for a particular blog.

Some of those who would prefer a blog to be used for inreach within the community, and therefore to be read only within the Quaker community, were attracted to the idea of being able to restrict the audience for a weblog. This has technical consequences, as the public weblog services currently available on the internet are hosted on third-party public servers and are not restricted.

A possible complement to explore would be to install weblogging software on a quaker-administered server with some form of password access.

Comments on the choice of a public tool and/or the viability or appropriateness of a quaker-administered weblog facility would be welcome. In particular those with weblog experience, or who are willing and able to do a comparative assessment of weblog tools, are invited to contribute to the developing-connections egroup.

The workshop group felt that it would be useful to set up a gateway page on the quaker.org.uk website with a list of links to Quaker weblogs (once there are some!) and to weblog tools so that Quakers would have an easy way to find these resources. As weblogs are self-moderated this should probably have a disclaimer indicating that all content of weblogs is personal to the author.

Resources and Links

See Spiritual Journal Weblogs page on this site.

‘The promise of the web was that everyone could publish, that a thousand voices could flourish, communicate, connect. [Before weblogs] the truth was that only those people who knew how to code a web page could make their voices heard. We are being pummeled by a deluge of data and unless we create time and spaces in which to reflect, we will be left with only our reactions. I strongly believe in the power of weblogs to transform both writers and readers from audience to "public" and from "consumer" to "creator".’

Rebecca Blood, ‘Weblogs: A History and Perspective

Ruth Mason

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