Real Life versus...?

In the whirl of modern social media, I find it all too easy to forget one particular arena or tool as I focus on others.  The lure of www.blipfoto.com, an Edinburgh based social media initiative, based around posting a single photo each day with (if one wishes) some reflection or sharing, has rather distracted me from Facebook and blogging, and even taken me away from Twitter unless I make a special effort to interact.  But why bother I (maybe) hear you ask?  The whole social media thing is fraught with potential for problems and miscommunication and wasting time, isn't it?

I disagree, of course.  There are times that following the holiday antics of friends of friends on Facebook or choosing one of the many rants to trend with on Twitter can seem to melt productive time away like the spring sun melts the snow on the Argyll hills. But the connections, the deep conversations, the long distance immediacy of interaction is breath taking.  I tend to tether this iPad to my smartphone when I am sat on a ferry or waiting for a few moments between meetings or visits, and catch up with the whirl of hundreds of people that I know or am connected to.  I see their joy, their pain, the excitement, their frustration, their questioning, their certainty, their doubt: the list stretches on and on and on.  Occasionally the connection becomes very intense, through a direct message because the pain is too much for public consumption, or a text because other avenues have dried up. People, their minds and souls, are out their in this virtual community.

I have always been convinced that God wants people to minister in this place, that is not a real place. Some people do, and I have met and worked with some of them. Some transmit encouragement and challenge, some manage and care for online communities.  But the social media and web presence of a real life Christian community is a vital part of that community's mission.  This is nothing new to say, and I, and the churches and organisations that I represent are far from perfect at this virtual presence business. But we try. We tweet. We try and promote our Facebook presence. We try and keep our websites fresh and appealing.  This is proclaiming the gospel, just as much as living our real lives in our RL community.

A footnote and final reflection on social media.  I have tended to avoid some social media tools, mainly for reasons of time constraint, but this evening I fell off my LinkedIn wagon and actually sent some network requests out to people from a suggested list. Why? Well, why not.  The faces from, in some cases the distant past, brought back memories of the past 25 years in quite a startling way.  I was quite nervous about sending some of them - work colleagues from pressured projects in the past may not be that excited about the automated pestering that linkedIn will give them to connect with this random Episcopalian from their past.  But I look forward to making some of those connections and sharing just a little of where our divergent lives have taken us.

Viral vicars and the gospel...

A Twitter friend of mine is the lady vicar who led the flash mob at a wedding last week. 

http://youtu.be/SZDQ3daF33I

It is all going rather viral now, with the Guardian and other reporting on it.

And even some of my clergy colleagues condemning it for being irreverent, and not appropriate within a liturgy.  Thankfully, the ones that I've spotted with this sort of line have only very recently been ordained so I suppose know no better. They will hopefully grow up to distinguish between their own preferences and propositional statements on 'right' and 'wrong.'

There is also a great big slice of clergy anxiety about it all.  "But <I> couldn't do that...!" is what it seems to be about.

Each of us has to minister in a way that fits us, our shape, our spirituality, our personality type.  Kate Bottley is and extrovert who likes to dance, evidently. Others are not.  She can declare love and blessing and the grace of the gospel by the delight that she gave others at that church wedding. Others have to try and do it their way, with the people that they come across and working with their own selves.

Where does this blog post go? I don't dance at weddings: never been asked, probably never will.  But joy, laughter, putting people at their ease, making it their day as well following liturgy: all those things feel important as we proclaim a gospel of love, redemption and life lived in fullness

General Synod reflections...

The speaker at last night's General Synod dinner was Professor Tom Devine.  The name rang a bell for me, but in my ignorance I must confess I didn't know that much about him.  A Scottish historian, leading academic, that sort of stuff. (Image from forargyll.com)

He spoke last night as a Scottish Roman Catholic, in the wake of the events of the past few months and years.  Not a comfortable place to be starting from.  He was upbeat about his church, and as a historian seemed to have good historical reason for so doing.  He ended by saying that future "was not his field" which neatly sidestepped the crisis that their leadership, who lack an empowered laity and have some rather horrendous systemic issues, must now face.

The thing that I heard was the change in what it is to be a Scottish catholic, from the tribal basis of even as recently as the 1960s.  The working class discriminated group that were Scottish (/Irish) Catholics at the start of the 1960s have now become leaders of Scotland.  Judges, politicians, leaders of industry (but less so the financial sectors...) all are now occupied as easily by Catholics as by anyone else.  The influx of English firms/organisations, and English Catholics (of which my parents were two) changed all that.  It doesn't now matter.  

My take: maybe religion doesn't now matter, so who cares about the denomination/faith/tribal loyalty of people? It does matter in many places still - the tribal loyalties of the old times are still present in Scotland.  Episcopalianism doesn't quite fit neatly into it.

But I was struck by my personal response to Tom's talk.  My father was a university professor. His father was a shipwright on the Mersey.  He was part of a social revolution that turned merit into a factor in where one could aspire to be, rather than class or tribalism.  He was a catholic, although became disillusioned with tired rhetoric from out of touch men in black who seemed more interested in maintaining a self-satisfied status quo that transforming themselves or others (at least that's what I think happened, when he walked away some years before his death). But he worshipped the ground that John Henry Newman walked upon, and the energy of the Jesuits who educated him (with no sinister undertones).

My own swim - from the Rome side of the Tiber, changing into the Tweed as I came back north, confuses me with where I am with my own Catholicism, which is still part of what defines me.  You can take the boy out of the Catholic Church, but you can't take... Etc. etc.

I think my late father would have enjoyed discussing Tom's talk with me, and seen himself in some of this revolution where being a catholic is no longer an obstacle to progress in Scotland, as Scottish structures and society have changed.

But it seems that celebrating the fact that religion is less relevant (the negative way of reading this revolution in the last 40 years) is very uncomfortable for 'professional religious people.'  How do we make ourselves relevant to a Scotland that doesn't see religion or denominations as relevant or meaningful matters. How do we proclaim a gospel in a post-sectarian society?