Nothing...

As you know, I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook.  I have left it abruptly several times.  Each return has found me whittling down my "friends" more and more.  I still have a few that I care not to, given that there is zero interaction with them, but I cannot work up the courage to unfriend them.  SIGH.

Anyway, today is a day that I find myself wishing to leave Facebook again, wrapping my hurt around me, tucking my tail, and fleeing.  Why? you ask.  Because I am hurt by the dearth of likes for the Stella Young Ted talk.  

I have four or five folk who consistently "like" my posts because they know that I view "likes" as a way of saying "You're okay, Myrtle" or even "I support you, Myrtle."  Consistently, on Facebook, I have found that when I am most vulnerable, when I share that which is deeply important to me, I often have zero likes.

I admit that it bothers me that I have little interaction on my posts.  Mostly, what garners comment, are my learning-about-cooking posts.  I actually do wonder why the other 14-15 folk wish to be Facebook friends if there is no interaction between us.  And the lack of exchange, in general, leaves me feeling the freak.

I started this Book of Concord Group, hoping to have others who love the text join me in sharing what they are reading/thinking about the BOC.  At the high point, I had just over 250 members, but I did not have folk who actually wanted to engage in discussion or to share what they were reading.  I felt more and more and more lonely, despite a couple of pleas for interaction.  I couldn't understand why so many folk wanted to join but no one really wanted to interact.  I mean, joining did result in a quote from the BOC in your feed most days, but why join a group who's purpose is to revel together in the BOC and not revel?

I had decided to close the group, but I know that my three Facebook friends in there really appreciated the BOC quotes, as did one pastor who specifically mentioned them.  So, I ended up turning it into a secret group (so I would have folk bugging me to join) and removing all from membership except my three friends, the pastor, and a woman I know who loves the BOC.  I still do not get interaction, though the pastor has tried.  And one friend has tried to post BOC quotes because she knows how lonely I feel in my own group.  The ... skewed ... part of me see this as just another failure.

So, since I feel the social oaf on Facebook and regularly find myself hurt over the silence of my Facebook friends, why do I stay?  Because I am lonely.

I strongly believe that what Stella Young has to say in her very short TED Talk is deeply profound.  I believe it is a message that everyone should hear and everyone should value.  I believe it is a message missing in the church, having rarely found a church that was disability friendly or ever found a pastor who saw me as something other than disabled and wounded.

I have said many a time that one of the reasons I love the BOC so much is that my doubts and fears and anxieties are represented in those texts as something normal, something that will be regularly encountered in the church.  In the BOC and in Luther's writings, I am not an outlier.  Strange to be so accepted by a man dead centuries and not much so by those who are still alive.  SIGH.

I posted the Stella Young TED Talk yesterday at 2:49 PM.  As the day wore on and no one "liked" it, no one commented, my heart sank.  I checked several times in the middle of the night, thinking of those in different time zones.  I checked this morning, thinking of those who were busy and off Facebook yesterday.  I checked it this afternoon whilst waiting at my doctor's office.  I checked when I got home from fetching a new prescription.  And I checked before and during writing this.

My heart hanging out there for the world to see and ... nothing.