blogging

I'm giving up social media for Lent.

There. I've said it.

Ash Wednesday, in two days, initiates the period of Lent, which culminates in Passion Week, and leads to Easter. In Lent, we remember and join Christ,

who though he existed in the form of God
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself
by taking on the form of a slave,
by looking like other men,
and by sharing in human nature.
He humbled himself,
by becoming obedient to the point of death
– even death on a cross!

The least I can give up his social media.

What this includes: facebook, twitter, and blogging.

Let me clarify one point up front: Lent is not about establishing good habits or giving up something you shouldn't be participating in in everyday life. It's about giving up something daily as a tangible reminder of what Christ gave for us and how we are to pick up our cross to follow him.

In other words, I'm not giving up social media because I think it's a bad habit I need to break or because I need to get in shape or spend this time elsewhere. I'm giving it up because it is something meaningful to me that will daily remind me of my need for Christ. Every day, when I log in to my computer, my habits will want to direct me to facebook, to my blog, to twitter, to pop in and say hi to my friends. At that point every day, I will remember what Christ did for his kingdom and how I need him.

This is my way of participating in his story.

I don't deny it will be hard (which is the point). I will miss my friends, whom I meet only through cyber interaction on a daily basis. I will miss talking about the books we're reading or our knitting projects.

For example, yesterday, I started reading Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. (I started it during the Nordic Olympic run, because, let's be honest, as much as I'm an Olympic fan, you don't have to pay attention to the whole marathon-like run.) The story is about an Irish girl (we're not given her age, but she seems to be around 18) who moves to America in the years following WWII in order to get work. She has to leave her family and suspects she will never see them again. She's in a strange land, and knows not a soul. In the onset of her homesickness, the author says, "She was nobody here. It was not just that she had no friends and family; it was rather that she was a ghost in this room, in the streets on the way to work, on the shop floor . . . Nothing here was part of her." Haven't we all experienced this, especially in a globalized society where we begin to lose sense of home? I want to talk about this, but alas, blogging will be gone for me. 

Or another example: this weekend, I had an unknitting project. I had started a scarf quite a while ago with three different strands of yarn, a ribbon-like yarn, a fluffy, sparkly yarn with this faux fur, and a thin string on which I had thread beads of blues and browns. But the scarf wasn't working. The combo wasn't working. This weekend, I unknit the piece to find myself tangled in a knot of the different strands. I spent hours, yes hours, working on this knot. I learned: A cord of three strands is not easily untangled.

Besides missing these conversations (and learning what is happening in your lives, as I won't be reading blogs either), I have a fear. You will forget me. Out of sight, out of mind, don't they say? Then who will I be? (In a way, this relates to the passage from Brooklyn.) And here, during this Lent season, I expect God will remind me my true identity: in Christ. Not in work, not in friends or family, not in blogging, though all these things are good. 

One of the threads that weaves through Douglas Coupland's apocalyptic novel concerns blogging. (Yes, Generation A is apocalpytic in that it portrays the end of the world as we know it--and, thanks to a Prozac-like drug, we feel fine.)

Each of the main characters in Coupland's story tells his/her own stories. One character tells a story of a young man who has lost the story of his life. The implication is clear: springing from our obsession with fame, we all look for the story of our lives. Unfortunately, with nothing real left in life, we can't find one. We use our extreme sports and death-defying feats in attempts to bring fame-worthy excitement into our lives.

In the story of the young man who has lost his story, the following exchange occurs between a woman at the Learning Annex, where this young man has gone for lessons in something interesting (bungee jumping, Tae Bo), and the young man (it begins with Craig, our young man in question):

"I thought maybe Tae Bo would loan my life a unique narrative edge."

The woman--whose name was Bev--said, "Craig, the hardest things in the world are being unique and having your life be a story. In the old days, it was much easier, but our modern fame-driven culture, with its real-time 24-7 marinade of electronic information, demands a lot from modern citizens, and poses great obstacles to narrative. Truly modern citizens are both charismatic and [sic] can only respond to other people with charisma. To survive, people need to become self-branding charisma robots . . . So, in a nutshell, given the current media composition of the world, you're pretty much doomed to being uninteresting and storyless."

"But I can blog my life! I could turn it into a story that way!"

"Blogs? Sorry, but all those blogs and vlogs or whatever's out there--they just make being unique harder. The more truths you spill out, the more generic you become."

(I'd give you a page number, but Kindle doesn't list page numbers.)

To add to this evidence, I read an article in The New Yorker the other day about media, specifically in regards to Obama. This article also pointed out the (negative) consequences to this 24-7 media marinade, which disallows journalists from getting any real story. Several times, especially when quoting Obama communications administration, they referred to the narrative Obama wanted to communicate, or the narrative of Americans. Have we become so self-aware of our own story that we can no longer let it unfold naturally? What are the implications of this?

(Side note: These past weeks, we all watched the events in Haiti, blogging, twittering, perhaps watching a rescue on TV. I'm happy to see our concern for another nation, but I wonder how much is true concern and how much is it safe concern? If our sympathies are real, why not spend time on a weekly basis in homeless shelters, orphanages, and nursing homes, entering into their suffering?)

While these Neil Postman-esque prophesies unfurl around us, I don't believe this means we abandon blogs (obviously, or I'd be using this post to say Goodnight, Gracie). Ruth Haley Barton warns us against accepting technologies without evaluation. This doesn't mean we all don Amish garb. It means we better know how things affect us--our Christianity, our communities, our families, our work, our play. We can't all become Wendell Berrys. Because of blogging, I've found other writers, knitters, gardeners, poets, and photographers (as well as a slew of other artists) who have encouraged me in these endeavors. I've discovered friends who have encouraged my spirituality. If I consider creativity and spirituality (not entirely different entities, by the way) to be essential to humanity, than blogging has shaped me in positive ways.

But I also have been obsessed with finding my own niche, my own small pond in which to be famous. I've asked, how can I be unique in this space? What is my brand?

I suppose we approach this as we do everything: with mixed motives. I am neither purely good nor entirely corrupt. I am saint and sinner. Coupland's comments and The New Yorker's article remind me to always pay attention to the whats, whys, hows, and consequences, to not do things willy-nilly just because I want to. And that's a good thing.

Thoughts? Reactions? Poison?

Print between the lines: Title quote from Bones (Sealy Booth)

Based on the advice from my brilliant husband, Chris, I decided to go ahead and move the content from my old blog to this one.

It's been tedious.

My right eye has started twitching.

Unfortunately, I'm not delusional enough to add all the comments, which is ashame since most of the smart things are said by my readers.

But I have two observations: