Community

The other day, I saw my sister post on MySpace to her friends something about keeping in touch over the summer. I thought it was funny. That used to be something you had to say to your friends when school let out for the summer, or else no one would call you. This is the formula often found in yearbooks:
"K.I.T., my # is 555-5555. Love, Myname!!!"
But now, do they really call each other that much? Amy talks to a few friends on her phone, but usually her limited minutes keep her phone calls oddly short for a thirteen-year old.
"Hey, what's up?; Not much, anyway can you do this?; Yeah okay, see you then."
Click, she's gone. She mostly uses it to text, which she does constantly.
"Check out this pic!";"Lol, omg, ikr!";"Crazy!";"cool, ttyl, gtg";"ok, bye."
Anyway, the other funny thing was that she posted it on MySpace. Think about the typical thirteen year old's summer now: family vacations and camps if you're lucky, but mostly sitting around bored. If you're bored and you have a MySpace, don't you think you'll be online constantly and thus keep in touch with your friends? Community in school kids over the summer now seems much easier.

I've got this new web browser David told me about called Flock. It's like Firefox, but geared towards social networking specifically. It takes all the sites you are on and makes access to all of them and each of them ridiculously easy, just to save you some time. Thanks a million to the people who came up with it! So, I installed it and set it up with my accounts that I actually use nowadays. (As opposed to ones I used to use such as LiveJournal and others, ones I use frequently or would like to use so I have them anyway.) I have this great sidebar now which tells me everything I'm on, if I'm logged on or not, and shows me all the important content from it that I want to see. It makes it really easy to go to the actual site if I want too. I'm apparently a member of Facebook (Veta Bowers), Twitter (@Vetachan; Veta Bowers), Gmail (trinityoflove, veta.direct, and ashley.s.bowers), Picasa (TrinityOfLove), Myspace (Veta Bowers), Blogger (TrinityOfLove), and YouTube (trinityoflove21). The last sentence allows you to proficiently stalk me, and since I'm sure anyone with web access can see this if they want to, Hey Stalkers I Don't Know!!! Anyway, it makes me think about community. Most of the people I've been close with are my friends on at least one of these sites, along with some family and even people I barely know. The anonymity of the computer screen and the gentle "What's on your mind?" they use to con you into putting up a "status" message makes people very open and vulnerable, so they bare their souls to the world, thinking nothing of it because all they really did was press buttons on a keyboard. But because of those clicks and buttons, I can see what my old middle school friends are doing right now, I know what people are thinking about when we haven't actually spoken in years, I can even view their pictures and videos from their life. And they see mine. See, I'm typically a pretty guarded person. I don't like to expose my emotions even to my closest friends and those whom I love and who love me most dearly. I like to think I'm guarded online too. But, I'm really not. A while ago I twittered about some deep emotions regarding my fear of the loss of my loved ones. A few weeks ago I spent hours putting photos on Picasa and tagging them. I used to blog on MySpace and LJ about some pretty private things. And now, I'm using this Blogger. Anyone can view it, yet I put my personal information on it. Later, I'll probably try to figure out how to post my graduation videos on YouTube.

See, these things are designed to bring people together over long lengths of time and space, and they do, but they also don't. See, we think we are being brought to voice. We think we can say anything, just shout it into the void, and we're talking, voicing opinions. We feel a release about it, but then in reality it barely makes a ripple in the series of tubes. Maybe no one saw it, maybe it wasn't loud enough, maybe all of your friends saw it but then moved on to the next blurb or blog, with or without responding, but most likely not actually being affected by it, letting it sink in. We have this overload of information flying at us, how can we possibly ingest it all? Some of it has to be deflected, or none of it will stick. Yet every few minutes, my flock updates to let me know there are new RSS feeds to read, new videos and pictures to view, and new status updates by my friends. I read them, maybe I reply, then I move on. Don't get me wrong, I love having such great and easy ways to keep up with people, see them even if they live in a different state or even country, but between that and television and other media and school and church and actual face-to-face communication, there is an overload that actually inhibits me as a person somehow. The effects of this modern world, my life and experiences, my family and the others around me, have made me a codependent and given me AD/HD. At least that's my theory. It makes my head spin!

I think I am fascinated with things I can't seem to obtain. Community, the knowledge of my own feelings, good communication, trust, an understanding of identity, functionality, "normal". Maybe I have it but I over think it and loose it. Maybe I could have it if I sought it. I just want to analyze what community is, then maybe I could recreate it somehow. I want it in my life and I want to be able to produce it among my family, friends, and one day a church I hope to start.

As a Christian, my standards for what should be come from the perfect God, who I believe to be trinitarian in nature. This complicated concept is best explained by using an exponential equation. 1 to the third power, meaning I believe in one God and one God and one God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit> three persons in one. Thinking about how community should be makes me think first of the Trinity. See, they each have a function and the three of them have only one purpose. They're in constant contact with one another. They work with and through one another. They're never alone and are easily self-contained and sustained. They are all they need and get along in perfect harmony. They're the pre-existent coeternal Godhead, one and three simultaneously.

Of course, this seems impossible among separate human beings who are by very nature not one as God is. Maybe this division we face among ourselves is a result of the same thing which divides us from God. Jesus, the son of God, God himself who was born into flesh like created man, is the one who has re-opened the lines of communion with our heavenly father, God. The price of our continuing depravity is death in the eyes of a perfect God, but rather than sentence our guilty selves God decided to take the death penalty in the place of us, the convicted criminals. What a crazy act of love from a righteous judge! Anyway, this radical act inspired many of Jesus' followers to renew their lives and faith, and become radicals themselves. By trying to spread the good news about our salvation to everyone, they created communities in many cities which became known as "churches". They were pretty informal, though they dedicated different tasks to different people based on their maturity level and talents. The communities met regularly, had a meal together, prayed together, and learned how to live as Christians together whether their background was in paganism or Judaism or something else. They broke all social and economic barriers between one another- even race no longer mattered. Despite stirring up issues because of their strange new teachings, they lived as model citizens of high moral standards. They served the poor and widowed and took in orphans. It seems to me that since Jesus is the way to reconnect with God, the church is supposed to be a way of reconnecting with people.

True community is modeled after the Trinity and the Church.
Later I will probably blog more about this issue. I have many thoughts on it and much more research and thinking to do. Comment if you have any thoughts or questions for me, I'd love to hear them!