AKMA’s Random Thoughts

When Florent and the interview team were visiting with me, one of the topics we covered involved what it’s like for a priest to participate in online life. Florent’s question set me to reflecting about “e-Parish” ventures of one sort or another. The projects I’ve read about seem all to have involved replicating, in various ways, the notion of a “parish.”

But that premise relies on the kinds of geographical, physical relationships that online interaction renders supplementary (rather than essential). If something like congregating is going to happen online, it’s not going to happen because someone stakes out a virtual chapel, a virtual coffee hour, a virtual parish membership roll. That picks up the impaired aspects of the physical-world congregation, and makes them the definitive norm for digital congregation. That picks up the stick at the wrong end.

Contrariwise, I’ve found that something much closer to a “congregation” or (in a limited sense) “parish” arises freely in situations where people want to communicate with somebody on a basis that regards their theological identity. Think of the Real Live Preacher’s weblog; that (it seems to me) reflects something much closer to the full sense of “online congregation” than a posited “St. Somebody’s Cyber-Parish.”

And, to bring this around, I’ve found a very parish-like community of people who have offered their time and attention and thoughtfulness to the matters about which I’ written here. Only a small proportion of the people who come to this site profess an active Christian faith; that’s not a problem to my claim, though, because part of my point is that the who’s-in-and-who’s-out game doesn’t have the same compulsory urgency. Over the years, I’ve emailed and chatted and blogged with people about life and death, marriage and divorce, sex and loneliness, God and Jesus and Torah and gods and no-god. I’ve talked to you on the phone, theologized and interceded and just meandered. Sometimes we get together, which is a special treat. I’ve prayed for people who asked me to, and for some who didn’t ask (sorry if I give offense here), and in all these things I’ve felt a keen awareness of our connections to one another — even when I haven’t known your offline name. Sometimes people have checked back in to register a sense of how this connected with their faith, or lack thereof — but that’s entirely beside the point (not to them and me, I mean, but to the notion of “how we are together”). At the heart of what we do together lies the extent to which our connections, yours to me and mine to you, affect us, our hearts and dispositions and actions; those connections don’t reduce in any true way to a simple “in” or “out,” “parish” or “other kind of community” dichotomy. It’s more complicated than that.

That’s different from “being a parish,” you may say — and that’s just my point. It’s an online way of congregating; it makes sense of how we gather and disperse online, and it fits. People who congregate around here accept me as a priest, even if they’re not sure what to make of that. I’m a priest for them, and they’re friends to me — and we make a pretty snazzy congregation, as far as I’m concerned. Better than that ol’ cyber-parish any day, so there!

I’m working out from underneath my five-day absence from Evanston and my sudden return thereto. I’ve actually gotten a couple of necessary errands done, and met my classes, and had appointments, and so on. Tonight, as soon as I finished my plate of Pippa’s Extreme Red Sauce (and some tube-shaped pasta, not penne), I dashed out to the western subrbs, to St. John’s, Mount Prospect, for an Adult Ed evening discussion. The whole building looked dark, though, and I had a very bad feeling about things. I had traded emails with the rector just this afternoon, and it says right here in my calendar. . . “St. Hilary’s, Prospect Heights.” Oh.

I’d have been fine getting to St. Hilary’s — it is, after all, only one town over from Mt. Prospect — but the road I was taking wove in and out of the edge of Prospect Heights, so when I saw the sing that said I was entering Wheeling, I doubled back. . . then I doubled back again, and discovered that if I stayed northbound a little further than the sign for Wheeling, I’d be back in Prospect Heights. Eventually, finally, I pulled into the church parking lot.

We talked for an hour and a half about biblical interpretation, allegory, and the Temptation in the Wilderness. They were patient and appreciative; I was relieved to roll home and sink down into bed. In just a few minutes I’ll be drifting off to sleep.

I don’t have a particularly good excuse — a time zone change of only two hours, and a day less busy than some — but I’m entirely exhausted. I had meant to post some photos to flickr, and to clear some backed-up email, but I can’t do it.

Mañana.

I’m back safely, with the kids, without my Valentine — but we had a great weekend together, and sometimes when we looked at the signs around us, it seemed as though we had never been away. . . .

Wedding in five hours.

Sermon done.

House-blessing service compiled and printed (just in case — it’s a long story).

The spambots have been busy, haven’t they?

Miss you. Back soon.

My Safari window is getting clogged up with pages I wanted to comment on and link to, but which I haven’t found time actually to write about. Some people solve this my putting d.elici.o.u.s links in a sidebar, but I haven’t girded my loins to figure that one out yet. I need to clear the decks, though, so let me point you to:

Adina Levin’s entry on friendship, conversation, communication, “social signals,” and online interaction — a very intriguing contribution to three or four discussions I benefit from.

Scott Matthews and Patrick Ross’s discussions toward a middle way in intellectual property publication, distribution, and remuneration. I’m resistant, not out of my determinedly piratical temperament, but from the sense that Scott’s proposal still owes more to perpetuating obsolescent economic customs than to maximizinng the efficiencies and possibilities of new technologies. But I haven’t taken time to think these over fully, so don8’t mind me.

Shelley’s fantastic overview and exploration of tags, tagging, memes, folksonomies, and how to exploit them. Speaking as someone whose name is already, in effect, a tag, I need to keep listening closely to her.

And in answer to her closing wish, she’s only one good tutorial away. . . .

If you’ve left a comment, or are looking for constant-updating excitement, or whatever, please be patient. I’m depending on the bandwidth of, well, not “strangers” but people whom I’ve only just met. It’s slow and sporadic here, so I won’t be as available as usual.

Well, it was a long twenty-four hours of travel, but we have arrived safely for Juliet’s wedding. On the plane flight out, however — and this slightly modifies the adverb “safely” — Margaret turned and asked me, “So, how’s the sermon?”

I had been so determinedly focused on grading the stack of papers on my desk before I took off that I had entirely forgotten that I should prepare a homily. So for the time being, I’m thinking evangelical nuptial thoughts, and reminding myself that it’s unkind to preach more than a couple of minutes at this sort of occasion.

Two years ago, I think, I posted a quotation from Henri de Lubac that Margaret sent me as a Valentine.

This year, she’s studying de Lubac in her doctoral program, and she regularly sends me clippings from her reading. This week, she excerpted some words from Catholicism, the 1950 translation of the French edition of 1947:

“Just to imitate primitive Christianity or the Middle Ages will not be enough. We can revive the Father’s all-embracing humanism and recover the spirit of their mystical exegesis only by an assimilation which is at the same time a transformation.
For although the Church rests on eternal foundations, it is in a continual state of rebuilding, and since the Fathers’ time it has undergone many changes in style; and without in any way considering ourselves better than our Fathers, what we in turn have to build for our own use must be built in our own style, that is, one that is adapted to our own needs and problems.”

De Lubac proposes two conditions on those who would take up, perpetuate, and renovate the Fathers’ teachings:

“We must recognize in the first place the great diversity of the theories which have been professed in the course of Christian history on those innumerable subjects where religious truth comes in contact with our human preoccupations. Secondly, we must realize to how great an extent these theories depend on social, intellectual or cultural conditions in a state of contstant development.”

“For although dogma is essentially unchanging, the work of the theologian is never ended.”

I really, really dislike the use of “reference” as a verb.

As I fight my way through a small stack of papers and fend off the daily barrage of small-but-urgent tasks, I’ll take a second to add yesterday’s homily to the “Extended” portion of this post. Everything went smoothly, I think, aided considerably by the fact that we used the same liturgical from all the way through the service (a rarity here). The sermon would benefit from some simplification toward the middle — I recognized, as I was preaching, that at least one clause had outgrown its surroundings and needed to be a sentence on its own. If I were preaching it again at another service, I’d have been busy editing and emending. . . .
Continue reading “Monday’s Homily”