Emerging Women

As 2007 draws to a close, I’ve been having fun looking at the blog stats from this past year. Compared to last year, we tripled our yearly hits and have guests from all around the world. We continue to grow as a community and I have been blessed by the voices present here.

As we wrap up the year, I would love to hear what sort of things you all would like to see for Emerging Women (on the blog or otherwise) in the upcoming year. Suggestions for activities, blog series, book discussions? What could we do to serve you better?

And to end the year with a bit of fun, I’m including a list of interesting search results that land people on this blog. There are of course typical google searches that land people here, but these stood out to me in their unique, strange, and disturbing ways. For some I can’t quite understand how they brought people here and for others I wonder what possessed someone to google that in the first place. Anyway, I found it amusing. I’ve added my comments on a few in italics.

“negative stay at home dad”
“how to stop seeking approval be honest”
“emerging church medical marijuana”
“pastor likes to watch me breastfeed”
“woman who like being gluttons”
“christian statistics lust bra straps”
“what james dobson thinks of the book eat, pray, love by elizabeth gilbert” because he does my thinking for me…
“ads of strong women seeking sissy males”
“emerging supernatural woman”
“encouraging the feminine side for my sissy son”
“god created men stronger than women heart wise”
“the women who got burned by aliens” ummm…
“why beer is not meant for women”
“emerging women 7 ups for christ”
“god im growing a second butt”
“looking for appreciation poems for pastors wives”
“sermons on why God created women” why, could you not come up with a good reason on your own?
“what god thinks women should act like within a relationship”
“husband wife switch bodies”
“should a christian woman show cleavage for an evening function?” because Google will give you the right answer…
“what makes you think about those things” Because Google can read your mind when you are really vague
“man but not women is made in the image and likeness of god”
“red wine vinegar pimples”
“2007 50 sexist woman” I assume they intended to type “sexiest”, but I had to laugh
“a peaceful meaningful pagan christmas”
“can a hostess throw a person off a airplane” hostess???
“advice expectation from a submissive woman from a master”
“laws prohibiting women from eating chocolate in public” this is just scary
“names of women who have done something great in 2007″

and (Jemila) just so you know, the top three keyword searches that land people here are 1. Emerging Women, 2. Emergent Women, and 3. Butt Sex.

Erin Word (one of the ladies behind “Faith In A Dress“), Cindy Bryan and myself are organizing a synchroblog to take place on Monday 27th August. The question for the synchroblog is “How Do You Pray?” The idea can be to discuss what your prayer life does or doesn’t look like now compared to how it used to be. How do you view prayer? What part does it take place in your spiritual life right now and so on, you get the gist!

We would love it if some of you here would like to take part and share your journey. If you want to can you either reply here or leave a message on one of our blogs. Also if you could leave here, or send to us a link to your blog entry once you have posted it. I’ll post on Monday or Tuesday who has taken part, so that even if you do not feel like participating this time, you can still read other peoples stories.

Hi All

Before I point you all to some of the great EW posts from this past week, I want to announce that tomorrow Emerging Women turns one. So Happy Birthday to Us!

I started the blog a year ago mostly as a way for the women who had attended the Emerging Women ReGathering to stay in touch. There had been much talk that weekend about using our collective voice, to make our presence known in the emerging conversation, and to work towards getting more books by women published in the emerging world. This blog was meant as a resource and encouragement to achieve those ends. It has since grown to be more inclusive of all who are interested in exploring what it means to be an emerging woman. I personally have been blessed beyond measure by the women here and want to thank everyone for the ongoing conversation.

What are your thoughts? Are we achieving the original goals of this blog (should those goals even exist)? As we move into our second year of existence what needs to change, what needs to grow, and what should stay the same? How can we serve women better and just in general be a better resource? How can our voice make more of an impact on the emerging conversation?

I would love to hear your thoughts. And just to highlight a few of the amazing women here who are using their voice, here are some blog posts of note from Emerging Women. Enjoy.

Kim has started a new blog and has a really interesting post up titled Naked Figureheads Have More Fun.

Jan pulls from a variety of recent experiences to reflect on proving ourselves.

Kim Wilkens had an article published recently in her alumni magazine about her experiences in Honduras.

Makeesha has some good thoughts on Christianity, hip-hop music, and living as an exile.

Lyn reviews the new book Jim and Casper Go To Church.

Have a Great Weekend.

There are a couple of upcoming blogger events that I wanted to make everyone aware of. I encourage everyone to participate as they feel led.

On April 28, 2007 you can lend your voice to the Take Back the Blog! Blogswarm in support of the rights of women to participate fully in all aspects of our society, including specifically online in the world of blogging but indeed everywhere and at all times, day and night, without fear of harassment, intimidation, sexual harassment, online stalking and slander, predation or violence of any sort.

And then on April 30, 2007 – “Silence can say more than a thousand words. This day shall unite us all about this unbelievable painful & shocking event and show some respect and love to those who lost their loved ones.
On April 30th 2007, the Blogosphere will hold a One-Day Blog Silence in honor of the victims at Virginia Tech. More then 30 died at the US college massacre. But it´s not only about them. Many bloggers have responded and asked about all the other victims of our world. All the people who die every day. What about them? This day can be a symbol of support to all the victims of our world! All you have to do is spread the word about it and post the graphic on your blog on 30th April 2007. No words and no comments. Just respect, reflect and empathy.”

Okay random blog/community stuff to talk about.

Sometime in the next few weeks we will be starting projects that should help us connect to other Emerging Women more easily and get the voices of Emerging women out there in the blog world. So look forward to that.

Blog aesthetics. As part of the Amazon Associates thing I’ve turned on a function that allows amazon to search the blog for book titles and add links to them for us. Why – well its helpful to have links to things we are talking about and not everyone knows how to write HTML and it could up the purchases from our Emerging Women Amazon store and bring in more donations. (and of course it makes amazon more money). I’m not sure I’m liking it – especially since it links to phrases that were not meant to be in reference to a book (although apparently amazon sells a book by that title). Anyway, all this to ask – what are your thoughts? Have you noticed? Is the advertising too intrusive or just wrong for us? Let me know.

And on the silly fun side of things. Since today is an election day around here (must remember to go vote when daughter wakes up from nap!) and the local races have been ugly, I am going to break the law of restrictions for nonprofit groups and tell you guys who to vote for. I recently stumbled upon the Blogger’s Choice Awards. These are, of course, a silly subjective set of awards, but fun to browse all the same. (I had no idea Will Wheaton had a blog! be still my jr. high heart…). You can nominate and vote for your favorite blogs (you get multiple votes). Just because I could, I nominated Emerging Women for Best Religion Blog.

The thing is, most of the really great (and highly ranked on technorati) emerging church blogs have just 1 or 2 votes. So my vote is to get the word out and encourage people vote for those blogs that are exploring these emerging questions. (so far I see that blogs like Jesus Creed, Urban Abbess, TallSkinnyKiwi, and (e)mergent voyageurs have been nominated. You have to search for them (by their url) since they are buried in the lists. Let us know if there are others you think EW should vote for!)

Have fun!

A quick note for anyone who may be interested:

I recently started a new blog for those of us who are interested in writing about our faith: http://writingaboutfaith.blogspot.com. I spent most of last month looking for a collaborative site like this, and when I failed to find one decided to start my own.

I will be posting some of my own creative writing in the near future. Hopefully others will as well.

If you’re interested in joining, email me.

And now I’m off to recover more fully from a busy (albeit fun) Easter weekend.

So I just got an email from a EW reader saying that the blog had been all messed up for over a week. Sorry I didn’t notice it before and thank you for pointing that out. Apparently an image that had been posted wasn’t received very well by Internet Explorer and because IE couldn’t cope everything got messed up. I’m always on using Mozilla Firefox as my browser so all the template stuff is made for that browser’s settings (I still can’t seem to get the weird lines to go away in IE…) So note to self – sign in on IE every now and then to check things out. I personally love Firefox (and really can’t stand the new IE that Vista upgraded me to…). (Firefox is free for downloading – here.)

Anyway – I was just wondering what browsers all of you EW readers out there use. Is the blog “off” on any other browser? and please let me know asap if something weird ever does happen again!