So it was a sad day today when The Dish came to an end, Andrew and his team feeling it time to move on to other projects and endeavors. It felt like losing a dear friend. I'll miss The Dish. And I'll always cherish the fact that The Dish linked to a couple of my posts.
As I pondered my emotional connection with The Dish and Andrew Sullivan, someone I only know through his blog, I began to think about you, the readers of this blog. Over the years I've received so many emails, letters, comments and gifts from you sharing with me and thanking me about how much this blog has meant to you, how it has saved your faith, how it carried you through a dark place. I imagine that the connection you've felt with me is similar to the connection I felt for Andrew Sullivan.
So, similar to what Andrew did much of this week wrapping up The Dish, I want to take a moment to share with you how important you, as readers, have been to me. I might have saved many of you, but you have saved me as well.
When I started this blog back in 2006 I was in a pretty lonely place. Yes, I had friends but my thoughts and struggles and beliefs about Christianity were so unique and peculiar I never had found anyone who deeply understood where I was coming from. I felt alone.
But I also felt some of the things I was thinking and some of the conclusions I had reached about the faith could be of help to others in the church. But I had no outlets to see if that was the case. I was, and remain, a psychology professor who mostly taught statistics. Why would anyone give a book contract to a statistics teacher wanting to write about theology? Why would anyone invite a statistics teacher to preach or speak?
In my faith tradition the preachers were the ones with a voice. The preachers wrote the books. The preachers were the ones who were invited to speak to large audiences. Me? I had lots of thoughts about what the preachers were talking and writing about. But I spent my days in classrooms talking about the standard deviation and the correlation coefficient. No one cared about my theological musings. Why would they? I wasn't qualified to have a theological or biblical opinion.
And then I started a blog.
Suddenly, I didn't need to score a book contract. I didn't have to wait for the speaking invitation. I could talk to the church directly through the Internet. And amazing things happened.
Before the blog I would be awed when I saw preachers getting to speak in front of thousands. There was so much I wanted to say to the church, so much I wanted to share. But who was ever going to give me, an unknown statistics teacher, that chance?
Thousands of people now read this blog every day. Many millions of people have visited this blog. I can't get my head around that. Millions. I don't need a pulpit or a publisher. I don't need a speaking invitation or a book contract. I have this blog. I have millions. I have you.
I'm sharing this not to share a success story of how a lonely, marginalized voice found its way around the gatekeepers that controlled and curated the conversation of a particular faith tradition. I'm sharing this story because when I found you and when you found me all my alienation and loneliness ended. Here on the Internet I had found my people. We were sprinkled across a hundred different faith traditions. We were lonely, minority voices from a thousand different churches.
And we found each other.
We struggled with the same questions and resonated with the same answers. Before we had been alone. We were the crazy heretic sitting in the back of the Sunday School class or stewing through the sermon. But here we felt known and understood. Here we felt normal.
So thank you. Thank you finding me. Thank you for reading. Thank you for encouraging me. You have saved me. Since 2006 I've felt normal. And known. And loved.
I hope I make you feel the same.
