3,003,592

A gathering of bloggers Iron bound section, Newark, NJ 2012

I just checked the stats on this blog. I do that from time to time, mostly just to check which blogs are getting the most "page views". I'm also fascinated by the map that shows you the location of the origin of most of your blog viewers.

But today, just now, actually, the number off to the right caught my eye. I think I've noticed it once or twice before but I've never really paid much attention. Today, I did.

It read:

Page views all time history: 3,003,592

Wait just a minute, I thought out loud.

Is that really three MILLION, three THOUSAND, five HUNDRED and ninety-two?

Get out of TOWN and shut the front DOOR!

Curious, I scratched around a bit more. I discovered that, apparently, I've posted 3,293 essays on my blog. Well, with this one, that will be 3,294.

Padre, the lovely Mona and the late, great Laura

Near as I can figure, my first blog post was on June 9, 2006 and it was entitled "Civil Rights and Liturgical Rites are not Special Rights" in which I spoke to the anxieties around two issues which I thought would frame General Convention.

At that point in time, I didn't know how to add pictures or, apparently, how to use the spell check function, and my ability to turn a phrase was in its infancy, to wit: describing +Gene Robinson as "an honestly gay man."

That was apparently followed that same day by a little thing I called "Anglican Communion 101". It was a little something I had written for my parish newsletter, to assist my congregation understand just a wee bit my passion for the institutional church as a potential vehicle for attaining the sort of doing justice, loving mercy and the walking humbly with our God that we say we are about.

We did make our way through that awful time. Mostly. We ended up with Resolution B033 which committed the church to "exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.”

Newly elected PB Katherine Jefferts Schori said "it was the best we can do." Indeed, that's what I titled that blog post.  As I re-read it just now, 13 years later, I could still feel the sting of the pain.

So, before I get lost in the weeds on Memory Lane, here's the thing: I started writing this blog in 2006 at the suggestion of my Parish Administrator. I had been a deputy to the 2003 General Convention and had sent daily emails to my Vestry to keep them posted as to the events and issues being debated.

They, then, printed out the emails, copied them and sent them 'round the congregation.

"A blog will be so much easier on everyone," my Parish Administrator said and, after a brief discussion, set it up for me. I called it "Telling Secrets," after my favorite book at the time. I posted something about the one major legislative issue and how Anglicanism works and left it alone for the next week until General Convention began.

A gathering of bloggers and our spouses 2012

I honest to God thought that the only people who would be reading my blog would be members of my Vestry and congregation.

No joke. That's how absolutely ignorant and stupid I was about how technology worked as well as its potential and possibility.

I had heard about "the information super highway" and something called "a search engine" but while Google was founded in 1998, personalized searches only came into being in 2005, a year before I began my blog. I suppose that's no excuse to those of you who are "techies" but it's a pretty big deal for " a simple parish priest".

Today, people who read my blog are mostly from the United States, followed by the UK, Canada, Russia, Germany, France, India and the Ukraine.

Imagine! It still pretty much blows my mind.

Then again, I've expanded the topics of my post from Anglicanism in general and the Episcopal Church in particular. Here are the top five all-time page views.

Lara Logan's Rape Feb 18, 2011, 35 comments	49043
DO NOT buy Milo's Kitchen Chicken Jerky Dec 13, 2011, 138 comments	48930
Amy Winehouse Jul 25, 2011, 14 comments	47586
The bishop and the cyclist Dec 31, 2014, 117 comments	38110
Dream a little dream with me Jan 27, 2012, 5 comments

It won't come as a surprise to anyone to know that most of the visits to my blog come through word searches. Which has brought many strange strangers to my blog. I have learned more about "click bait" than I thought I needed to know.

And then, there are the "trolls". Lord, have mercy!

Ally, Padre and the lovely Episcofemme (Eileen)

I've certainly made mistakes over the years, most of which reflected my ignorance about the power and reach of expressing one's opinion in writing and in public.  Or, the one-dimensional aspect of this form of communication and the importance of body language and facial expressions.

Or, frankly, that anyone would really care what I might have to say about any given topic.

I'm not that naive anymore.

I am still surprised by the venom some people have in response to an expressed opinion by someone who is a total stranger to someone who is, to them, a total stranger.

It's usually done anonymously. Of course. Although, I must say, that sort of nasty exchange on a blog isn't so much a thing anymore. Social media provides the opportunity to have disagreements and arguments with total strangers in "real time" which proves much more satisfying to "trolls."

These day, hardly anyone leaves comments. Which is fine. I post on my FaceBook page and people mostly leave comments there. Which is fine.

I don't blog to enter into conversation with people. I blog because it's an outlet of expression.

Mostly, I blog just to work stuff out in my head. To "think out loud".  To reflect on an experience I've had or a thought that has been stuck in my craw.

And, yes, because I'm a "feisty, opinionated woman". I confess. It's true.

One of my seminarians once suggested that I used my blog to say the things I couldn't say in the pulpit. I think there may be some truth to that.

Although, interestingly enough, my sermons are pretty much all I post these days.

Will I continue blogging? Probably. Unless I stumble upon a compelling reason not to, I suppose.  I've actually made some interesting friends over the years through this blog.

Indeed, there were a few gatherings of Bloggers  several years back - before FaceBook became the rage.

We met in New York once, at General Seminary. We met again in Southern NJ - Princeton, as I recall. And again in Newark, in the Ironbound section.

There may have been other gatherings that I missed but those three I remember with great fondness and affection.  I've actually scattered a few pictures of our gatherings around this post.

That was then. This is now. I have no illusions that anything like that will happen again.  Had I know that at the time, well, I don't know that I could have enjoyed them more.

3,294 essays in about 12 years. That averages out to about 274 essays per year.

I don't think I'll increase that average. But, I'll probably have at least that many opinions.

As Rachel Maddow says, "Watch this space".

(And, thank you, to all of you who have, over the years.)