Connecting

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Connections

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.

Related

The Attraction of Thor

We are visual people. We “read” others and situations. We identify immediately or not with our surroundings. Many men no longer identify with the Church, at least not the current image.

And there we have the Attraction of Thor. These and many other men are not going to identify with Catholic “lite”. Their lives are hard, and full of risk. They are fathers and soldiers or sailors or aviators. They seek not comfort but fortitude and a priest and Church that can be of help to maintain this duty and purpose in life as fathers and warriors.

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The Search

if we are truly searching that the hoped for discovery of self and/or truth then our lives develop deeper meaning and this in turn may make our lives richer. We can then see people, events, readings etc, in the light of this search. Therefore our output as individuals, workers, family members becomes something more than mere existence. We become more fully human, more aware.

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Sickness

We need each other. Sometimes we prefer to be alone, and need to be alone. But there are times we need others in our lives to be a help and offer love and friendship. We are individuals but we are interconnected. “No man is an island” we hear. And that is indeed true.

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