I used to post links to the right of this blog, under the header “Friends and Good People.” Some of the links were to other blogs; some, to business Web sites or organizations run by family and friends, past and present. I took most of them down after a couple of them turned up broken, and a blog or two hadn’t been updated in long months, and one site featured objectionable (to me) content a single click from my page.

Recently, however, I’ve begun to follow a few new blogs fairly regularly, and I find I am often delighted by the writing and/or the subject matter. So I’m adding them under A Few Favorites, at the right, and featuring them here today:

• Prairie Father is the blog of Father Tyler Dennis, whose ordination we attended last summer. Fr. Tyler’s experiences in his first year of the priesthood are moving, his wit is sharp, and in a PC world, he pulls no punches.
• Two Years In Honduras is the blog of a recent U grad who worked in our office until this May and has since gone two (you guessed it) Honduras with the Peace Corp. She is smart, independent, idealistic, self-aware…and a strong writer to boot. In many ways, Kari and I are opposites, but I do not doubt her heart or her genuine love of others. She will go far.
• A Long Plane Ride Away is the blog of a colleague and dear friend who splits her time between the U and an orphanage in Thailand which she helped get off the ground. Somehow she manages to give her whole heart to both, and most of her energy, to both. She’s there now, and missed terribly here.
• Laura the Crazy Mama is the blog of a friend and fellow parishioner at St. Michael Catholic Church. (Take the virtual tour; it’s a lovely church.) These days, the blog is worth visiting for the masthead alone, but Laura writes boldly and with not a little humor on faith, family, and about anything else that comes to mind. Like Fr. Tyler, she pulls no punches. Like all crazy mamas, she shouldn’t have to.

I’m struck by the diversity of people and perspectives we can come to love in this life. The people behind my favorite blogs would never cross paths unless I invited them all to a chili feed some crisp autumn evening and didn’t explain who else was coming. I’ve disagreed with each of them myself at different times, sometimes vehemently. But I love ’em just the same. Hope you might, too.