What brought me here, what brought you here

This is the 100th post since I started blogging here in the middle of June, so I’m giving a quick reflection on how this has been going for me, and I’d really appreciate any feedback from readers, lurkers or otherwise.

I started blogging about religion as a way to have arguments about religion with people who are not my boyfriend, since I didn’t think it was fair to him or Catholicism to have him be my only source for knowledge about Catholic theology.  I thought it would be useful when I took RCIA classes during the inquiry period, but that didn’t work out.  I also hoped that the discipline of writing every day would… well, that certainly was not a success.

I follow a number of atheist or Christian blogs, and I noticed that a lot of atheist blogs were focused primarily on political problems, while the Christian ones spent more time on morality.  I’m really grateful for the work that blogs like Friendly Atheist do to keep me up to date on First Amendment violations, etc, but they weren’t helping me answer my boyfriend’s challenge to find other atheists who believed that morality was absolute and rooted in something outside cultural conditioning.

I’m still working on expressing my beliefs, and the morality/sin series will get active again next week after I take a big midterm tomorrow.

I really appreciate the questions I get from commenters and the helpful exegeses provided any time I have a question about the bible readings from Mass.  If you have any suggestions or requests for topics to be covered here, please leave a note.  I’m glad to try to answer any questions about my experience of examining religion or anything else you’re wondering about.

And now, since this is a milestone post, on to the round-up of funny search terms that have brought people to this blog:

Two people got here by googling “What is the difference between Jesus and Santa Claus”

I’m no expert on Christian theology, but, as far as I can tell, although Jesus may send you to hell, only Santa will stuff you in a sack and have you beaten by his slaves.  That’s the extent of my knowledge, so I can’t help the person who got here by asking “Did the church ever try to kill santa clause” [sic].

A number of you seem to have twigged that my half-Italian, half-Jewish heritage might make me an expert on schnozzes, or so I assume from the people who reached this blog by googling any of the following: practices that may harm our nose, children poking nose, or describe my nature according to my nose.

“It is a crag! … a peak! … a promontory! … A promontory, did I say? … It is a peninsula!”

Somehow, 31 of you found your way here searching for “promises salvation from social anxiety” (quotes included).  As I think a recent post made clear, I absolutely cannot help you with this.  I understand you haven’t many resources on that front, since when I googled it myself to try to figure out why it pointed to my blog, I got the following result:

Guess we’ll have to struggle on together.