One Year Old

When I was visiting Freedom Friends Church last month, we started our fifth birthday party by reading from the newly completed Faith and Practice. We didn't read the whole thing, but everyone chose parts that spoke to them. I read the section on integrity:

(2-5) Integrity
We hold dear the expression of faith through integrity and truthfulness. We attempt to be honest in all our dealings, as a group and individually. We attempt to live the life we profess. We take personal responsibility for our thoughts and behaviors, believing this to be the path to sobriety, sanity, and spirituality. We work at resolving our own problems before we address the problems we see in others. This is our witness of Christ; without integrity, our preaching and practice are useless.

It has been a year since I started writing on this blog. I am pretty surprised that I have managed to keep it up for this long. When I first started, I figured it would last for a few months at most. About once a week, I think I will never have anything to write about again, but then I find that I do have more to say.

I think one of the things that keeps me posting is that it is the one place where all of my Quaker sides come together. Being a member of two such different meetings makes me feel torn a lot of the time, and here I can write about how much I miss Freedom Friends while also appreciating the relationships I have with Friends at University Friends Meeting.

My blog also gives me an outlet for the things I wrestle with (God, writing, money, the Bible, music, being a young Friend, trying to live up to the light I have been given . . .). I think that being able to write about all of these things publicly helps me to live with more integrity.

After a year, I know that I am a baby blogger (really, I think I am still a baby Quaker) and I am grateful for all of the support everyone has given me. Thank you for reading. I really appreciate your comments, even though I am usually pretty bad at responding to them. Writing for the past year has been fun, challenging, and exhilarating, and I hope that I will feel led to keep it up for a while.