Social Media grows at an incredible rate. And the people who are members search for connections to a community, a community of their making in a sense. What was at one time a community limited to geography, perhaps by distance with letter or telephone, is now this community extended globally.

“Only connect! … Live in fragments no longer.” – a rather truncated quotation of E.M. Forster, but something that denotes the reason our society wishes to drop the distances between each other, to be a society together; even one that might have raging disagreements internally over vast distances.

We come to create what we desire and fear most: to be members of a connected society, one in which its members can no longer hide by distance from what we wish not to see or know. We are confronted by it all, all that might be ugly as well as the beauty. The gossip-like information in one, the beautiful sunsets shown in another, the brief “verbal” attack in yet another. We lose some of our autonomy in this broader connected world.

But despite the fear the connecting might generate, we do connect. We are drawn to look again and again at another’s perspective, even when disagreed with it. That annoying writer, that terrible tweeter, that indifferent perspective…that self-indulgent photographer.

But connect we have. We have zeros and ones propelled ’round the globe to thank. But we have one another, you reading this from wherever you are on the planet right now.

Our having this opportunity to meet and exchange through Social Media is vital in an exchange of thought. The ability to nearly instantly share the views of someone in Uganda or New Zealand, or Norway makes our new society one that is more open and prepared to share. I, we, may never agree on those ideas. We may never wish to invest more time in some individual’s perspective on any given topic. But we are prepared to respect that person’s right to an opinion and to share it.

I look forward to sharing ideas, thoughts and faith in the coming posts. I pray that something of what I might share would help in some way in that greater understanding and dialogue in this inter-connected community we have created.