Borrowing words...

Thrice, lately, someone has given me the words that fit the thoughts in my head.  I mentioned two of them the other day and wanted to add a third.

Thought #1:  Facebook is a community that is not a community.

I left Facebook mid-August.  Yes, I have fled that place before, but this is difference.  This was one of those (if you are from the South) Come-to-Jesus-Moments when I realized that hardly anything on there was real.  I needed it to be.  And I didn't know how to not need it to be.  So I left.

Yes, that day was a hard one.  It was, in fact, a day I posted about, blogged about, texted about, and messaged about before it happened.  I felt like I was standing naked and screaming at the world for help to get through that day.  Only the day came and no one remembered.  No one posted or texted or messaged or called any sort of encouragement or comfort of the Gospel.  Nothing.  No one. I was just alone in the battle of the day as I would have been had I not been so vulnerable and asked (in Myrtle fashion) for help.

I do believe that there are communities that exist outside of Facebook and that, therefore, also happen or are facilitated on Facebook.  But it is not a place to go for fellowship or support.  Seeing others have those things, sharing struggles and having lots of support and prayers and such was hard.  Because my life has become very hard.

Marie was so sweet yesterday.  She's been ill with a stomach bug or something and when she was struggling with her own innards, she was disconcerted and amazed to think about my struggling with it day after day after day.  Her words were comforting to me.  Truly.  Because it is hard for me.  And I struggle as much with the pain and bodily suffering as I do with seeing my failings of mind and faith during such times.

Of course, Marie and Paul and one of my pastors have all said that crying out in pain and suffering is not a lack of faith.  But that is such a foreign concept to me.  I really do see practically everywhere that the example of someone struggling with illness (or just about anything) is to give thanks and praise for said illness, to ooze serenity and trust that all things will work together for the good, to minimize or even discount suffering in light of the greater suffering Jesus face.

Yes.  Well.  I don't do that.

I get afraid when the pain is so bad I can only whimper.  I become insensible when certain pain begins and all I can do is wait it out.  I am fearful when I am shaky and weak from low blood pressure and low blood sugar and just about anything else.  I cannot see past the hour, the minute ... sometimes even the second.  I cannot ask for help because I cannot form thoughts or words.  I merely exist in the midst of the struggle.

At times, it is this way when I am lost in a maelstrom of emotion that I am still not able to process or handle or understand.

At times, it is this way when I think raw, primal, unflinching thoughts about who I am and what I actually, really and truly think ... or wonder.

On Facebook, there was a fellowship of sorts with home improvement projects or cooking, but not with struggling.  My friend Caryl really helped me to grasp that in many types of illness, others simply cannot understand if they have not experienced it.  I am grateful for her words.  But even so, even without understanding, there can be support.  I also longed to have a fellowship with a love of hearing and reading the Living Word ... and the Christian Book of Concord (BOC).  I longed for a chance to talk with others who hungered as do I and who spent time delving as do I and who had discoveries and questions and such.  I did not really find that.  I really do find it odd that I had more interaction with cooking that the psalms I posted or the bits about doctrine.

But Facebook is not a community.
And I needed it to be.
So I left.

To me, the truth of it not being real was confirmed in how hard (really impossible) it was to try and continue any sort of interaction with folk outside of Facebook if they were not already a real-life friend, someone with whom I had interactions (even if after meeting online) outside of Facebook.

I suppose the truth also is that none of those people needed me as a friend.  Needed or wanted.  I had no real relationship with them aside from, perhaps, befriending.  Being kind.  But not sharing lives and sharing struggles and sharing hopes and dreams and fears.

I had a Lutheran pastor once tell me:  I don't think you know how to be a member of a community.  And we are a community.  So I don't think _______________ Church is the place for you.  

I don't really see where that leaves the Holy Spirit in His work in creating and sustaining the church.  I don't really see where that leaves people who were not raised in healthy, nuclear families.  I don't really see where that leaves people who struggle with wounds created by sexual abuse, grief, loss, death, divorce, addiction, etc.—people who struggle with social interaction or trust or with questions and doubts and fears.  I don't see where that fits in with anything in the Bible where churches were concerned.

But, then again, what does a wall-flower hermit know?
Maybe wall-flower hermits don't belong in church ... or the Church.

In any case, I think Facebook lends itself more to a non-sexual type of voyeurism than anything else. And it is no surprise to me that research has shown Facebook can cause harm to users.

When email first came out, people bemoaned it.  People said that it led to poor communications.  Actually, people communicated poorly on it. Suddenly they had this tool to provide an instant response to someone, they way they would in person.  Email did not change anything.  Email did not change people.  It was a tool that allowed people to exhibit a behavior of thinking less before responding to something in writing.  And it was a tool that made it very, very easy to pass on what someone had written.

I heard all this talk about how emails lacked the nuances of spoken language.  But letters have been around for centuries and even phone conversations, where once can hear those missing nuances, have not been around all that long when compared to the history of communications amongst mankind. I mean, seriously, the Living Word is not limited because it is written.  Though, the Living Word is actually living ... performative and creative.  So, perhaps that's not a good example.

In my opinion, emails and all the social media forms that followed, only allowed humans to act as sinful beings more openly or more publicly or more directly.  The things I saw on Facebook oft horrified me, the way people talked to and about others.  The open condemnation.  Not just Facebook, true.  You can find such things in comments on articles and blog posts.  But, for example, I saw Lutheran men condemn and judge and label women as whores whom they did not know solely on dress.  And not even what pretty much anyone else these days would call provocative dress.  Little things and big things.  Words flung all over the place telling others what to do and think and feel and act and believe ... oft in the name of doctrine, if not actually in the name of Christ.  Yet I read the BOC nearly every day, sometimes for hours at a time.  Nearly all of that so-called doctrinal behavior correcting was not actually something I ever found in our Confession.

Basically, there is a civility lacking in how we communicate with others.  And an utter dearth of kindness and compassion.

I wonder if this is a chicken or the egg puzzle.  Did social media encourage this type of behavior, encourage what folk now call The Haters?  Or were we already on that path?

Back when I was in college, it was a common activity to pick on others in a joking format.  It would seem like everyone in the Bible study or Sunday school class was laughing, but if you looked closely you would see that they were not.  I did not grow up with that cutting criticism at school or at least until the 9th grade.  Then it began to creep in here and there.  Then from school to church.  Still, a certain level of civility remained.

I do not see that anymore.  I see more cruelty ... far, far more cruelty than .  And I see people setting out to fix others, to tell them what is wrong with them and what they should do about it.  Instead of caring for them, accepting them, and praying for them.  Instead of being a neighbor.  Instead of sharing the Gospel.

I am weak.  I have had so much law heaped upon me and seen so much heaped upon others that I cannot bear it anymore.  I cannot bear it being heaped upon myself. I cannot bear it being flung at others.  So, not only did I leave Facebook, but I stopped reading all Lutheran/Christian blogs except for Pastor Brown's and some personal blogs of my friends.  I stopped reading because, when it comes to faith, I read more of how to be than of Jesus.

A while ago, I started reading The Pioneer Woman's blog from her archives, starting at the beginning.  Not having cable and generally being a pop cultural/ current society ignoramus, I did not know who she was.  I have enjoyed her posts.  I have enjoyed the freedom of her posts.  I have enjoyed her sharing flaws and foibles and fears. I have enjoyed reading of her love for her husband and children. I have enjoyed learning about life on a ranch.  I have enjoyed her photography (especially seeing 1) large photos are fine and 2) one can never take enough photos of a puppy dog.  I have enjoyed seeing how her husband cherishes and accepts her for who she is rather than focusing on who she is not.  I have enjoyed the colloquialisms and words of my childhood.   I have enjoyed her pen.  Frankly, I have just plain enjoyed her blog.

Reading it oft encourages me.  Reading it oft inspires me.  Reading it oft makes me laugh.  Reading it does not make me feel judged or condemned or frantic about improving myself, my life, my faith.  In anything.  I do wish, though, I were as positive as she can be.  I am not her, however.  And I am still a forgiven child of Christ.

Or at least I hope I am.
Sometimes I fear I am not.
Knowing your sin is brutal.

Hers is not a Christian blog, though she is one.  Hers is not about telling people what to do or how to be.  It is just an online journal of a woman who actually started out in her pajamas (yoga pants) and ended up a mogul of sorts.  Good for her.  I am only in 2010, so I do not know if her fame and fortune changed her, but, thus far, she just loves her husband and her children and tries to embrace as best she can a life she did not expect.  [I could never handle daily manure-encrusted laundry.]

This brings me back to why I still read Pastor Brown blog.  Mostly, I see lots of Jesus.  Mostly, I see little, if any, telling me how to be or what to do in my life, in my faith.  The post below is one of the ones I think paints a good picture of why I like reading it:

It's interesting, because I will hear over and over people talking about different things that the "Church" needs to do. It needs become a moral force in society, it needs to feed the poor, it needs to do X, Y, and Z. And then of course, there are the Church bureaucrats who will come in and make up new rules for how the Church can make all these things happen.

The Church has one job. It is to listen. It is to listen to the voice of Christ Jesus, her Husband.

The problem is too often the folks in the Church are not content to let the Church simply listen. Instead of just living out their own vocations, they want to make their own vocation the roll or duty of "The Church". They want to use the Church as a tool - perhaps to enforce their own ideals of right or wrong, creating rules for others to live by and saying, "Ah, but the Church says." Misses the point -- what does Christ say? Some want the Church imprimatur for their own works of love and mercy -- but again, why is that needs? Why do you think the rest of the body must do the work of the hand, or the foot - be whom Christ has made you to be and walk in the works He has prepared for you.

The Church's focus is to be this - to hear the life giving Word of Christ. To receive His gifts. To delight in the fact that He has washed her.

Now, do individual Christians from within the Church have things to do? Of course, we are in the world, and thus we are given to love our neighbors. But again - that's you, that's me, that's our own thing. I am not the Church -- and it's folly when I try to act as though I am.

I love to hear the Living Word.
I love to receive His gifts.
I delight that I am clean in Him ...

... but I also doubt that He could possibly forgive me, forgive my fears, forgive my doubts, forgive my shame.

Is two out of three okay?

Last fall, my church started posting sermons online.  Lately, I turn one on as I am falling asleep, hoping, I suppose, that the Word will work in me when my thoughts and fears are least likely to blind and deafen me.

Last night, I stood in wonder looking at these tiny bits of creation.  Such fog we had!  The floodlights at the back of the house were warming the mist—or so I surmise—creating this rolling movement to and from the house.  Mesmerizing.

Every drop.  God is aware of every drop.  His creation.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!