Looking back: blogging as a spiritual discipline?

A year ago today, I put up a post asking whether blogging can be a spiritual discipline (and if so, how), and came to the conclusion that it can.  I tried to start a meme and get others asking that question, but mostly that didn’t happen; my question did prompt a little discussion, but then it fizzled.  Unexpectedly, the main effect of the question I posed was on my own posting habits.  That was my second post of 2008, and the 97th post on this blog; in 2007, I had 65 posts.  By contrast, a year later, this is now my 668th post since that one; it’s fair, I think, to say the change was significant.  Clearly, blogging has become a discipline for me.  The question is, has it been a spiritual discipline?The most obvious answer is, not always.  There have been a lot of posts over this past year for which I couldn’t make that claim, for one reason or another.  That doesn’t necessarily make them bad posts, though some of them might have been; it just means that posting, say, Jonathan Coulton’s mock ’80s sitcom title sequence probably didn’t make me a holier person (though it did make me smile, which is a good thing, too).To some extent, though, I think it has.  I wrote last year that “blogging can help me see the gaps between what I live and what I believe,” and that has proven true, though not exactly in the way I thought.  I do try to “apply my beliefs and their implications not only to the lives of others out there in the culture, but also to myself and my own life”—to ask the question, “If I say x, and that means someone else ought to change and to live differently, how does it mean that I need to change and live differently?”—but I know there are times I manage that and times I don’t; but here’s where the public aspect of blogging comes in handy, because in those times when I don’t, or when I’m careless about doing so, there’s usually someone out there to post a comment and point it out.  As such, one aspect of blogging as a spiritual discipline is that it exposes one to the correction of others.  (Bearing always in mind that no commenter is any more infallible than I am, or than anyone else is, so there is some need to sift and weigh the comments one receives; nevertheless, the conversation is valuable.)As well, I think the simple discipline of writing has helped.  I don’t know that it’s made me a better preacher, but it’s made me a better writer, and has made the process of writing smoother and less wearying for me; as such, it has at least made me better at producing sermons.  That in and of itself, again, might not be a spiritual discipline, except that I think better, and learn better, in conversation than solo; writing might not be quite as good as a good talk with the right person, but writing about God and Scripture and the church can still be quite valuable for my spiritual growth.  I’ve never been very good at the stereotypical “quiet time”; silence is a good discipline for me primarily because it’s a very hard one, and I can’t sit still to save my life—unless I have something to focus me, like writing.  Writing becomes my devotional time, if I’m writing about things which serve that purpose; writing about God sets my mind and my heart on him, and writing about his people shapes and forms me as a pastor.