Peace, Joy, Pancakes

Last updated on: April 24, 2015 at 10:23 pm by Michelle Arnold

Peace, Joy, Pancakes 2015-04-24T22:23:53-07:00 Michelle Arnold

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Last summer I decided I wanted to blog again. Well, I already blog as a staff member of Catholic Answers for the Catholic Answers Blog, and I’ll still be blogging regularly over there (my posts can be found here), but I wanted to write about topics that didn’t fit neatly into Catholic apologetics.

I’ve been blogging on and off since 2002, the dawn of the Blog Age. In that time I’ve contributed to several blogs—including a small personal blog you have never heard of; the personal blog of my colleague and fellow Catholic Answers apologist, Jimmy Akin; and, yes, the Catholic Answers Blog. Having had experience in setting up a personal blog, I dove right in and, in a fleeting burst of creative energy, created “Peace, Joy, Pancakes.” The title came from a quote by Benedict XVI’s brother, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger. In commenting on the ups and downs of the Christian life, he said, “It can’t be all peace, joy, and pancakes.”

It had been over ten years since I had created a blog, and my limited technical skills were rusty, but the finished product was not too bad. And over the next few months, I was able to blog quite a bit and the reception by readers was gratifying. Although that blog has now been deleted, many of the posts there were polished up and reposted on the Catholic Answers Blog, where you can still find them today.

Nonetheless, after those few months I realized that maintaining a web site is definitely not one of my life skills. A lot of work goes into web sites behind the scenes—troubleshooting tech problems, working with site hosting services, building an audience. Some bloggers do that with ease, obviously having received ten talents from the Lord that could all be poured into creating their own platform. My one talent was writing. So, with much sadness, I kind of let “Peace, Joy, Pancakes” die the slow death of a neglected web site and concentrated on my blogging for the Catholic Answers Blog.

I still wanted to write about topics that didn’t fit neatly into Catholic apologetics though. A few months ago, an idea slowly formed. Hat in hand, I approached Elizabeth Scalia, manager of the Catholic Channel here at Patheos, and tentatively asked her if I might be able to blog for Patheos.

She said, “Sure, why not?”

With thanks to Elizabeth and to the staff at Patheos for taking a chance on me, here is the reboot of “Peace, Joy, Pancakes.” At Elizabeth’s suggestion, the blog’s title is my name, but Msgr. Ratzinger’s quote still appears on the masthead—as personal inspiration.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

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