Best of 200

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Well, darling readers, another hundred posts have gone by since the last time I paused to review. What a whirlwind year and a half it's been! Last time, for my "Best of 100" review, I shared with you some of my most popular posts (according to viewing numbers as well as reader comments), as well as a few of my personal favorites. Since then, I've grown a bit more interweb-savvy and now have several nifty tools at my disposal to give me a more accurate analysis of readership statistics. Unfortunately, I haven't been using most of these long enough for them to do me any good as yet! So for now, a more haphazard break-down will have to do...


Popular Posts and Interesting Series

Some old favorites continue to attract new visitors to the blog, but as my subscribers have grown (thanks to all of you who have passed on links and shared your comments, questions and insights on other blogs and forums out there!) several more recent posts have earned a respectable response as well.

• In the past one hundred posts, the most popular by far has been the post Cultivating an Environment of Truth, followed closely by Three Humans Walk into a Bar: Language, Labels & Naming Spirit. Song of the World: Some Things We Know is not far behind, with some controversial posts (such as Book Learnin', On Striving & Strife, and A Quandary of Cats) rounding things off.


• The most popular post of all time, in terms of reader comments, remains To Love a God: Struggling with Morality in Polytheism, and the inquisitive posts Why Druidry? and Is Christ Special? still draw a regular number of hits from Google searches, as does The Swan Maiden's Story, oddly enough (though it's not nearly as erotic as the more recent Yewberry: A Myth Retold)

Continuing my tradition of unreasonable verbosity, the past hundred posts have also seen a few serials attempting to explore subjects in more detail and depth, including:

• A series on poverty and prosperity back in October of last year (Voluntary Poverty, Love & the Prosperity Gospel, and God & the Free Market), which I've recently revisited with my dual-postings, The Group of 20 and the Mythology of the Market, and Archetypes in Market Mythology & The Role of Protest


• Re-Membering Theology, parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, a long response to Johnson's and diZerega's Beyond the Burning Times, deo and Mandy's announcement that they'd "outgrown Paganism" and the spontaneous blog carnival that followed


• A series on Spiritual Aesthetics (parts 1, 2, 3 and 4) followed immediately afterwards, with Part One making it into the top five most popular posts of the last year and a half


• A brief organic series emerged around Valentine's Day, with the posts Regarding Spiritual Growth, In Love with Spirit: Method & Purpose, and In Perfect Love & Perfect Jenga! (which has more clicks than views, according to FeedBurner, probably because of the unfortunate product placement!)


• This past June saw the birth of a new Pagan carnival in the blogosphere: Pagan Values Month, which I kicked off with a guest post over at Druid Journal, Pagan Values: Ecology, Environmentalism & Practical Pacifism, and continued here on Meadowsweet with the posts Relationship & Story, Go Play Outside!, Violence, Destruction & The Difference, and Relating to the Wild, before surrendering to the exhaustion of Lost in Thought...

Unnoticed and Unknown

Perhaps more interesting, some of my favorite posts have sat quietly unremarked for quite some time, so during this review I thought I'd take some time to gesture vaguely in their direction as well, in case readers might wander over to have a look-see.

• Several semi-poetic-slash-creative-writing works like After Beauty and Nobody Wakes Up Alone received no comments whatsoever! (Though Ode to Finitude and The Hunter, overt shameless poetry, garnered a few very complimentary ones.)


• On Grace and Finding Your Center: A Meditation on Movement didn't get much response either, though personally I'm rather smitten with them (of course, it was spring and I was rather smitten in general at the time).


• Shaman & Priest: How America's Cultural Landscape Shapes Its Religious Institutions had some potentially intriguing arguments to make, as did The Death of Civilization.

The Future of Meadowsweet

What's next for Meadowsweet & Myrrh? My dear, dear readers, it's always hard to predict such things... But my goals for the future involve posting more often (at least five times each month, that is, slightly more than once a week). To help me work towards this goal, I've come up with a few categories in which I hope to write more regularly, including:

• Pagan Pertinent Books: reviews featuring books that are not specifically by, for or about Pagans, but still have a vital relevance for deepening Pagan spirituality (my review of The Road is one such example, though I have others in the works)


• Pagan Parenting: observations as a not-actually-anyone's-step-mom about parenting challenges as they pertain to Paganism and Druidry (since I am in no way qualified to write about this topic, I figured I'd give it a shot)


• Sacred Textuality: meditations on excerpts from particularly meaningful spiritual texts and poetry (After Beauty was my first serious attempt at this sort of writing; swing by and let me know if it was even remotely interesting, relevant or helpful)


• Myths Retold: engaging with old myths in new ways, revisiting familiar tales and dipping a big toe into the waters of complicated stories that I'm still only just learning myself (The Tale of Mabon and Yewberry are both recent examples of this type of work)


• Experiencing Deity: on-going explorations of theology, polytheism and direct experiences of Spirit (along the lines of Three Humans Walk Into a Bar and On Grace)


• Musings on News(ings): thoughts on local, national and global news items from a Druidic perspective


• Solar/Fire Festival Contemplations: a necessity of every Pagan blog, it seems; thoughts on the changing seasons and their rituals and celebrations (for instance, Lughnasadh and Alban Arthan)


• Let's Get Physical: discussions of embodiment, especially regarding health and physical activity and how they relate to the Druid way (such as Finding Your Center and The Speed of Blood)

I'm sure politics, environmentalism, romance and career angst will also continue to play pivotal roles in the writings here---so never fear, your voyeuristic urges and anarchistic tendencies will be duly satisfied, as well. If you have any more ideas about things you'd like to read more about in this blog, don't hesitate to drop me a note! Until next time, happy reading!