No doubt. Consider his volumes and volumes of journals and his ideas about indirect communication. It’s easy to imagine him extending his multiple-persona pseudonym trickery into the blog environment.
Would Dostoevsky blog? Probably. Consider his “Diary of a Writer” and his serially published novels. But he’d have needed to make money at it somehow to pay his gambling debts. Maybe he’d have had a Paypal link and a quarterly fund drive like Mark Shea.
Would Jesus blog? Unlikely. There is a certain lack of dignity in blogging that makes it hard to imagine Jesus doing it. Consider that He left us no writings, even though he spoke with more authority than the scribes and pharisees. Is there something about the very act of writing itself that detracts from the dignity of the human person living and interacting in the present moment? — and blogging is the extreme example.
Would St. Thomas blog? Again it seems unlikely. Too informal and undignified a forum. Although perhaps he would read blogs and comment on occasion.
Would St. Augustine blog? Hard to imagine that he would be able to resist the temptation. Though he’d eventually repent of it.
Would James Joyce blog? Hopefully. That would be an interesting blog to dip into from time to time now wouldn’t it. The ultimate lit blog, perhaps.
Would Walker Percy blog? Nope. Would he read this blog? Only when Shelby Foote emailed him about it.
Would Flannery O’Connor blog? Yes, and it would be a lovely, funny blog that would break every rule of blogging.
Other women? How about Emily Dickinson? She might have blogged, for sure, yeah. Her little poems. How about Gertrude Stein, Edith Stein, Mother Theresa, Jane Austin, Virginia Woolf, St. Catherine of Sienna, Rachel Carson, St. Clare, Julian of Norwich, Mary of Nazareth?
I’ve no idea.
I was just thinking yesterday, “Dostoevksy would’ve blogged if he’d been alive”…what a ranting, distorted blog it would be! I suppose I was imagining something like Notes from Underground.
seasonal follies
Suppose our children could clamber into a wardrobe and through its back to another world, where, among other things, they might find themselves engaged in an adventure involving the possibility of redemption from sin. It must be allowed that such a narrative is categorically beyond reason. Take a world occupied by reasoning beings where another narrative, on which the wardrobe one was modeled, has persisted for over two thousand years in its latest form. Assume this narrative has adherents of many stripes and critics of mostly one mind. The latter group refuse to acknowledge the redeemer because everything about him confounds reason. A large segment of the former group cannot refrain from constructing all varieties of reasons why the latter group is mistaken. They do battle on fronts ranging from what are the legitimate worldly ways to celebrate the incarnation of the redeemer, to what policies that redeemer might favor in a war among various factions in the reasoning world.
Now, as for the redeemer, can it be disputed, to borrow a formulation from the man whose portrait is etched on the topmost left of this page, that he either is or he is not? In the end, there can be no other alternative. Surely, if he is our maker and our judge, he is doubled over in the loudest combination of laughter and tears our reason permits us to imagine. And he must wish that his proponents would strive, in their faith, to adopt the ways of his son incarnate, to follow him rather than dare to know him. As for those unable to get beyond reason, surely his chief hope is that they come to accept his grace,
But, as for worldly disputations over what the wardrobe maker intended by his tale, or whether department store clerks should prefer “Merry Christmas” to “Happy Holidays”, or whether one nation’s attitudes better serve his purpose than another, I’d wager he is utterly indifferent.
I imagine that flannery o’connor’s blog would also be terribly scary, in very funny way, or course.
I’m also not quite sure about Jesus blogging–he may very well have posted his parables; citing dignity as a prohibiting factor doesn’t seem convincing, he ran with socially questionable crowd.
What about John The Baptist?
Would he blog? From where?
(Nice blog. First time here, greetings from Argentina.)
Yes, John the Baptist does seem to fit a certain blogger profile. Perhaps he’d blog from the local public library when he came into town about once a month. His blog would be the web presence of a voice crying in the wilderness.
Have to disagree about Jesus leaving us no writings. Second-hand they may be, but we do have a philosopher-artist of extraordinary genius, and parables of equally extraordinary genius. Not too erroneous to say that it is as an artist that his renown is based.
Jesus didn't write, but neither did most of his contemporaries. He did like to sermonize, and his miracles always seemed to me to be a bit show offey, desperate acts seeking recognition and approbation by someone on the margins of society. If that doesn't describe a blogger I don't know what does.
Mike,
Didn't Jesus explicitly warn several people not to talk about his healing them? And didn't he heal people at the margins – i.e., lepers, i.e., people who couldn't really do much to make him famous? It'd be like me blogging about obscure Catholic novelists from long ago. Oh, wait…