The voting for the 2010 Cannonball Catholic Blog Awards has officially begun! I hope that all the loyal readers of this blog will vote early and often in this battle to the death that may ultimately prove this blog to be truly unappreciated. You can cast your vote for Blessed Is The Kingdom under the category of Most Under Appreciated Blog here.

Today I am happy once again to be taking part in Elizabeth Esther’s Saturday Evening Blogpost. Elizabeth is a bit behind on with her monthly opportunity for bloggers to share what they believe to be their best post of the previous month, but I am glad to see that she is back in the game. This month I am sharing a very recent post that addresses the question that often surfaces among Christians of whether we as humans are basically good or evil. You can find my post here.

Please visit Elizabeth’s site to see the best posts of my fellow bloggers!

My only response is to join with so many others who have misquoted Sally Field in saying, “You like me, you really like me!”

I hope you will cruise on over to The Crescat to nominate your favorite Catholic blogs and check out the other nominees.

Blogging has been slow lately. First there was Lent to slow me down. Now there is vacation, much of which so far has taken place far, far away from technology.

This morning the skies opened up with lots and lots of rain. My nephew and I knew it was coming. We were successful at staying dry. After a few hours of playing cards and reading, however, we decided we might as well head to a drier climate and return to the woods tomorrow. Thus, my ability to step back into the blogosphere for a short post.

My hope is that you won’t hear much from me over the next week or so, but as always there may be a guest blogger or two. Stay tuned!

]]> http://www.blessedisthekingdom.com/2010/04/08/before-the-skies-opened/feed/ 0 http://www.blessedisthekingdom.com/2010/03/27/beautiful-change/ http://www.blessedisthekingdom.com/2010/03/27/beautiful-change/#comments Sat, 27 Mar 2010 20:05:41 +0000 Fr. Christian Mathis http://www.blessedisthekingdom.com/?p=2607

An unexpected benefit to blogging has been the number of other incredible people I have come across who are out there blogging as well, sharing their thoughts, experiences and expertise on the world wide web. Bloggers often get a bad rap due to the fact that there are just so many who don’t, in my opinion, put enough effort into trying to write well or into developing a clear focus. While I don’t believe that bloggers need to be flawless in their writing skills (as is evidenced by this one!), they do need to give their readers the courtesy of always working to improve their own grammar and style. Perhaps more important is to provide readers with something of value. A friend of mine was recently chastised by a reader for veering into politics when his specialty is sports. It isn’t that his reader didn’t value a good political debate, but he follows my friend for sports information and was annoyed when he found him off topic.

Recently I have been adding more than a few blogs to my regular dose of daily reading and wanted to share them with you. However, once you get more than, let’s say ten, blogs on a sidebar list it becomes difficult for readers to discern which ones they might be interested in checking out. So, I have devised a strategy in an attempt to help readers of this blog decide whether they want to visit some of my more recent (or even less recent) discoveries. Rather than simply listing them all alphabetically, I have created seven categories (that’s right, seven!) that will give a basic idea of the category of each blog.

So without further ado, here is the new blogroll listed by category. I hope you will takes some time to check out some of these awesome people in the blogosphere!

Beauty

• Close to Home
• Enlarging the Heart
• Just a Minute
• Windows into Heaven

Five Fabulous Ladies

• Blest Atheist
• Conversion Diary
• Elizabeth Esther
• If Necessary, Use Words
• There is no wealth but life

Food

• Godspace
• Simple Recipes
• Wine Library TV

Food for the Soul

• A Practicing Human
• Faith and Food
• Glory to God for All Things
• Happy Entanglements
• Interrupting the Silence
• Joe Versus the Volcano
• Scholé
• St. James’ Kids

Food for Thought

• blog (where the magic happens)
• Echoes of Eternity
• Intentional Disciples
• Koinonia
• The Well Thought Out Life
• Whosoever Desires

Hyatts

• Marissa Hyatt
• Michael Hyatt
• Treasure Hunt by Gail Hyatt

Makes Me Smile

• Pithless Thoughts
• The Ironic Catholic

Lent is always a time when I encourage parishioners to slow things down in order to focus more on the basic practices that aid us in living the Christian life. One of the ways I plan to work towards slowing my own life down will be to spend less time blogging. It is something that I very much enjoy, but also an activity that takes quite a bit of time each week, time that I would like to spend on the disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

I have yet to finish thoughts on the final chapters of Evangelical Is Not Enough, so I will be writing a few more posts to conclude the series begun a few weeks back as well as other intermittent posts. The plan is not to disappear completely, but simply to spend less time on the internet this Lent. I hope the readers of this blog will join me in whatever way they choose to enter fully into this season of penitence and preparation.