Part Two -- Martyrdom, Love, Social Networking, and Theology -- Part Two

© Patricia Shechter
18 July 2010
Fourth Draft -- Unfinished
Please do not cite, copy, or quote

PART TWO

Social Media

We live in a culture today that offers so many distractions, so many means of subtle (and not so subtle) “entertainment,” so many ways which help us avoid paying full attention to anything that our minds seldom focus on a single thing for more than a few moments. In fact, “multi-tasking” has become an essential 21st Century CE life- and job-skill. It has become commonplace for affluent US North Americans to utilize multi-technologies all at the same time while utilizing a single device. People watch movies on their cell phones, iPhones, or “BlackBerries” while at the same time talking with friends, completing a homework assignment, and searching the web for the location, hours, and menu of a local restaurant, using the same technological device for all those tasks. New devices come onto the market every few months, new “must-haves” that ostensibly replace the now ostensibly outdated earlier “must-haves.” Most jobs, even entry-level positions, require the ability to manage multiple projects at the same time. Sending brief messages via cell phone has become so popular – so ubiquitous – so endemic – that it has resulted in the coining of a new verb: To text, as in “I’ll text so & so now.” Sending messages limited to a maximum of 140 characters via “Twitter” software now has its own verb, to “Tweet.” Life has started to be reduced to small bits – bits and bytes byte by byte -- mediated by ever newer forms of technology and media.

In a presentation at St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church on 19 January 2010, theologian Elizabeth Dreyer, referring to the revolution in communications brought about by the Worldwide Web, Social Networking, texting, etc., stated: “Our anthropology is changing.” Put In different words, these new media – the web, cell phones, computers -- and their applications – Facebook, YouTube, texting – are changing how we are and what it means to be human. Foundational to my theology is that being in right relation and in relationship are essential to being human. Thus, my concern over the impact of the new media and their applications focuses on how they impact both our individual and our relational lives.

It seems to me that we are coming to be reduced by and to what the technology and media are able – and willing, according to the programmer(s) – to handle. We are able to claim hundreds of “friends” on Facebook (FB), and those FB Friends are able to watch and follow our every move on YouTube, should we choose to allow that. They know our list of 25 things about us and whatever else we choose to reveal or share. But are some of them – or all of them – or any of them – really friends? Or have we reduced the concept and meaning of friendship to something unrecognizable prior to this era? And do these putative friends really know us at all? What is our definition of friend in this “brave new world?” What type of time do we spend with them? What type of commitment do we have with them?

And then, who is the person on our own Facebook page? Are we really that person? Are we the sum of the various pieces of data – the random, or even not-so-random, bits and bytes – we ourselves added to the Facebook technology? What have we perhaps exaggerated? What have we deliberately left out? What have we forgotten? Deliberately misrepresented (lied about), even, perhaps – G-d help us – fabricated?

Social Media and Relationships

With our lives getting broken down into tinier and tinier fragments of time, bytes, and pixels, lists of data points for Facebook, snippets of video on YouTube, will we lose the ability to integrate / re-integrate ourselves as whole, full human persons, created in the image and likeness, not of a computer technology avatar, but rather of the Holy? Will we leave behind the talent for long-term, in-depth conversation, the patience to listen and to drink deeply of another person’s story? And if we do not cultivate that talent, if we, in fact, have no place in which and no way in which to cultivate that talent, how well will we develop the capacity to establish long-term, emotionally, as well as sexually, intimate relationships? How will we establish our ability to pray, to meditate, to be in relation to and relationship with G-d? If we have difficulty sustaining relationships with other people, people we’re able to see, hear, touch, embrace; if we have difficulty listening to other people, difficulty believing them when they reassure us that they do, indeed, love, care for, and treasure us, how will we sustain our relationship with G-d, or believe that G-d does, indeed, love us as no other does, that is, unconditionally? As Jesus says to Thomas the Apostle in the post-Easter Upper Room, “’Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.’” (Jn. 20:29)

Don’t get me wrong – I love Facebook; I probably spend far too much time with it. And saying all of the above not deny the positive aspects of the ever-changing “Social Networking” universe. Its benefits became clear and obvious in the weeks following the massive earthquake that struck the island nation of Haiti on 12 January 2010. Facebook updates kept people around the world informed about the progress of the relief efforts of numerous relief organizations and also helped people caught in the disaster inform family members and friends of their status and condition. These media acted as “clearing houses” for the hundreds of inquiries concerning the whereabouts of people in Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were contributed to aid organizations via “Twitter.” Most incredibly, people who were trapped under rubble were able to send “Tweets” or text messages to let family, friends, & rescue workers know where they were, & this information helped to facilitate their rescue.

I don’t “text” or “Tweet” people. In my everyday context, however, I find Facebook to be a superb medium for reconnecting with and keeping in contact with friends, some of whom I have not been in touch with for decades. I enjoy reading what my friends have been doing, how their children are faring, what they are reading, listening to, thinking. I’m able to do all this without requiring an email from them; Facebook allows us to communicate in a kind of shorthand. Between Facebook and email, I was able to plan an eleven-day vacation in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the same time, I find it highly disconcerting to receive a “Friend” request from someone I don’t know, even someone of whom I’ve never heard – in one instance, in Morocco, and mostly in Arabic, a language I do not read. And I’ve “de-Friended” a couple of people for various reasons, including realizing that I wasn’t interested in reading what one was doing on a nearly-hourly basis & what she was cooking & eating for breakfast, lunch & dinner every day of the week.

Despite my finding Facebook useful and at times fun, I still have many questions and qualms about all of this new media. Reflecting further, I realized that those question & qualms brought me back to some very foundational questions. In our contemporary Western developed (perhaps over-developed), post-Industrial, post-Capitalist, extremely individualized, now-Globalized society, the main questions people seem to be asking, at least until this most recent thunderous recession, have been: “What do I like?”, “Who do I like?”, and “What do I want?” Yet, those are not my primary questions. As a Catholic Christian, a following of Jesus Christ, a feminist and lesbian-identified bisexual committed to “the faith that does justice,” an inheritor of both Judaism (by birth & raising) & the Christian Gospel (by choice at age 25) and tradition, my primary questions are: “In Whom do I believe?”, “What do I value?”, “Who do I love?”, “How do I live a life of love & justice?” and “Who is G-d calling me to serve / What is G-d ‘s will for my life?”

Social Media and Right Relation

Because I believe that living Ad maiorem Dei gloriam – For the greater glory of G-d – necessarily means living in right relation and relationship, these new media will be valuable only insofar as they help to develop & enhance relationship & right relation, that is, only insofar as they enhance our living lives of love and service. Thus, teenage boys using texting to check up on “their” “girlfriends” violates right relation.

More generally, a recent report on college students and empathy (Konrath, U MI Institute for Social Research, May 2010), indicated that its data show today’s college students “are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.” Researchers on the study cited several possible reasons, including exposure to media violence and the current atmosphere of hypercompetitiveness. Another factor, the researchers say, could be the recent development of social media. Edward O’Brien, a graduate student involved with the study, stated in a press release that “’The ease of having ‘friends’ online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don’t feel like responding to others’ problems, a behavior that could carry over offline.’” The confusing definition of “friends” combined with the distance provided by interacting with such “friends” almost totally online provides a buffer, insulating and isolating one from responses that are caring, empathetic, and loving. And I am forced here to wonder: How does Jesus’ “new commandment” in John’s Gospel to “’love one another as I have loved you’” fit in here, with our FB Friends? Would we follow Jesus’ commandment of love so great that truly loving service could lead to death, for those we name as Friends on Facebook?

A short digression: When I use the term “right relation,” I am referring to a way of being in relationship that is loving, caring, egalitarian, respectful, in which both partners in the relationship are true partners, with open communication & trust, in which both partners value what is unique about the other. Being in right relation means that those with whom one is in relation are regarded as “thou” rather than as “it,” in the sense of Martin Buber’s I and Thou. Another way to understand the quality of relationships is to recall the Benedictine vision of hospitality, an extremely important part of the Benedictine life and charism. Everyone who comes to the door of the monastery is to be viewed as Christ. “All guests…are to be welcomed as Christ.” [RB:53] As persons living For the Greater Glory of G-D, to live in right relation, our own homes and our own hearts need to integrate Benedictine hospitality, so that we treat all persons we encounter as Christ. Living in right relation involves not only those with whom we are most intimate but also those who are strangers, or even possibly potential enemies, when they come to our door. We are called always to live in openness to right relation with every person we encounter, recalling that Jesus calls us to love not only our friends but also our enemies. (Jesus never promised us that it would be easy, except insofar as it is the Cross that we share with Him.)

I see these new media valuable insofar as they help us to continue to strengthen, enhance, and deepen our love for one another. Email has been wonderful for keeping in touch friends who live far away from one another; in my life. It has enabled me to keep in regular contact with a close friend, Kevin, a Jesuit who works in the Society of Jesus’ Chicago Province Mission in Peru. At the same time, Kevin & I make sure that we at least talk on the phone at least once when he visits the US. Email, Facebook, & texting alone aren’t enough. Or, rather, they are, perhaps, enough for reportage – I’m doing thus and so, just saw this & that, am working on bric & brac. They cannot, however, take the place of talking with one’s friends & loved ones on the phone or, better, face-to-face. It is during those long phone conversations and times together, with one another, talking, sharing, walking, being silent, that relationships grow, develop, strengthen, and deepen. The only reason that my friendships with Kevin and other geographically-distant friends have continued through long years of long-distance connections is because, when we became friends, we had the gift of those many opportunities to be together over many graced days and evenings when we were able to cultivate our relationships, deepen and strengthen our ties with one another, negotiate whatever difficulties cropped up, & come to understand the depth of our love for one another as sisters & brothers.

These friends form a set of relationships in my life that are so crucial that I am able to say honestly that I don’t know who I would be had I never met and become close friends with them – and by close, I mean intellectually, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually intimate. A friend from college, Charlie, whom I’ve known for over 40 years; Mary Christine, a friend from Berkeley & my early days in the church, who now lives in New York; Kevin, who I met at and with whom I attended seminary (graduate school in theology); Gary, another friend from graduate school, a clinical psychologist & former Dominican priest. Other close friends I have or have had have given me the wonderful gift of their deep friendship at different times in our lives. From all of these friends, I’ve learned many, many things. And one thing I’ve learned in the process of living a friendship is that friendships take work. They require time, attention, deep listening, patience, faithfulness, love, affection, good humor, honesty, gentleness, constancy, integrity, continuity, humility, tenderness, a willingness to admit fault, a willingness to apologize, a willingness to be forgiving and to ask to be forgiven. And probably other qualities I’ve forgotten!

Perhaps it is by being in right relation with those we love, taking the time to be with them (when possible), to listen –truly listen – to them; to laugh and cry with them; be honest with them & tender with them; & all of the other hallmarks of right relation – perhaps that points to the way in which, in this life, on an everyday basis, we find ourselves living “Ad maiorem Dei gloriam” – “For the greater glory of G-d.” By being in & living in right relation, we live in the Spirit of G-d, loving, caring for, and being in service to one another. And, loved and cared for in such a way, we are then empowered to go beyond ourselves, to live lives of love & justice, to do the faith that does justice. St. Irenaeus, an early Church theologian, wrote that “The Glory of G-d is the human being fully alive, and the life of the human being is the vision of G-d.”. If Facebook and other forms of social media enhance our being in right relation with each other, if they help us to be more intimate with and more loving toward one another, help us to be more honest and less defensive, help us to care more deeply for each other, help us to better serve one another and encourage us in engaging in the faith that does justice, then this new world of ubiquitous communication may be able to have a role in moving us from communication to communion and to a deeper awareness and understanding of our closeness to G-d and our dependence upon one another. These new media may be able to connect us with one another more intimately, even if / when we may not know one another personally, because these media have the ability and power, in times of crises, to communicate the critical need being experienced by a population, human and non-human, and help us to see clearly the ways in which we are being called to serve those most in need.

I am reminded of a story I heard within days of the earthquake in Haiti about a group of highly savvy technical people in Washington, DC. Word was disseminated through the Internet that technical folks were invited to gather in an office after the end of the regular workday to figure out how people with their type of expertise could be of assistance in the disaster. A group of ten or twelve met; they had heard that one of the most critical needs to that point was for an integrated database that could list those who had survived and those who had been killed. Any number of organizations had their individual lists, but there was as yet no single list; thus, those searching for news of loved ones & friends found themselves having to go from one organization’s website to another in their search for information. The people who gathered in DC hadn’t known each other; they began talking, brainstorming, proposing ways to tackle this problem, and started figuring out how to create such an integrated single database. From what I understand, groups like this sprang up all over the world – groups of computer-technical people who heard of a need and spent all of their spare hours over the next several weeks to answer that need.

At the same time, it has already become clear that these media may also be used for ill and even for evil. Whether used for bullying by high school students of other students; cyber-stalking by an ex-boyfriend, ex-lover, or ex-partner; trying to document imagined cheating by a jealous spouse by checking his lover’s Twitter account; spewing forth anonymous insults, including sexist, racist, and homophobic tirades on message boards; and many more examples, these social media can be seriously abused. When abused in this way, they damage, injure, hurt, and destroy. In this way, these media add to the alienation, pain, soullessness, increasing lack of empathy, and amorality of contemporary society. I believe that we must guard against contributing to this use of these media by never taking their use for granted and by always keeping in mind the fragility of our sisters and brothers.

Again, I want to return to Jesus’ Final Discourse in the Gospel of John and remembering Jesus‘ “’new commandment’” to his Disciples to “’love one another as I have loved you.’” (John 15:12) Whenever we utilize these new media, I believe, those words of Christ should be foremost in our thinking.

Part One -- Martyrdom, Love, Social Networking, and Theology -- Part One

© Patricia Shechter
18 July 2010
Fourth Draft -- Unfinished
Please do not cite, copy, or quote

PART ONE

The original title of this article was "AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM ~~ For the Greater Glory OF G-D ~~ Martyrdom, Love, and Social Networking OR What Would Ignatius Say?" I began writing this theological meditation in the summer of 2009, just a couple of months after I’d been laid off from a job. I’d been trying to figure out what the phrase “For the Greater Glory of G-d” means – not in the grand sense, the historic sense intended by Ignatius of Loyola and lived out by generations of Jesuits (and many taught in Jesuit institutions), but rather in the ordinary-person, ordinary-day, ordinary-life sense. I’m still trying to understand it in the context of the early 21st Century, CE: The Post-11 September 2001 Era; the Digital Era; the Post-Runaway Capitalist Post-Economic Melt-down Era; the Global Instant Communication Era.

I would venture to say that many Roman Catholics in the US of North America and Western Europe associate “Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam” – For the Greater Glory of G-d – with martyrdom. For the most part, certainly in developed countries, the majority of people today, even people of deep (Christian) faith, have no desire to be engaged in or pretensions toward martyrdom. At the same time, martyrdom does seem to be embraced by many, Jesuits and others, if it comes. I’m not sure whether martyrdom is sought, i.e., gone after with intentionality – but I don’t believe it would be avoided by certain folks if circumstances aligned themselves in that direction. (I will admit here that I am a total novice when it comes to the thoughts of Ignatius of Loyola and Ignatian spirituality, and I need to research what Ignatius wrote about martyrdom, if he wrote anything at all.) Knowing his tendency toward practicality, however, I’m not sure that he wouldn’t have seen it as a waste of time, talent, and treasure. However, that is in no way intended to minimize the sacrifices of countless saints, Jesuits and others, who, following G-d, lost their lives in martyrdom.

Still, I remember a Jesuit friend, John Donohue, following the Memorial Mass at San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Catholic Cathedral for the four US women religious workers murdered by paramilitary death squads in El Salvador in early December 1980 – nearly 30 years ago now. To John, it was obvious that Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clarke, and Jeanne Donovan had become martyrs, and he was jubilant. He felt certain that their martyrdom assured them of heaven, and he rejoiced. I, on the other hand, by then a Feminist activist of 10 years on, was shattered. Shattered by their murders, and more, shattered by what I knew and what I could only imagine had been done to them prior to each of them being shot in the head at point-blank range. As almost always, almost inevitably occurs to women defeated and captured in war, before they were murdered, the four women were raped. I found little in their experience that glorified the Holy One and little leading me in that direction. Instead, I cried in grief and in rage, realizing once again that little had changed since Susan Brownmiller had written her ground-breaking book, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, published in 1975. As I had learned from my first and best teacher of Theology, Rev. Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, what one sees depends upon where one stands.

That’s not to deny or reject the power, meaning, and meaningfulness of martyrdom in the history of both Judaism and Christianity; thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands, have accepted death rather than abjure or deny their faith. From the Macabees in pre-Rabbinical times to Stephen, the first Christian martyr; to Thomas Becket and later the dueling Catholic (including many Jesuits) and Protestant martyrs of the British and European Reformations; to the Japanese martyrs of the 16th and 17th centuries CE; to the Jewish martyrs of the ghetto uprisings, death camps, and partisan organizations during World War Two who died Kiddush HaShem, glorifying the Sacred Name; to the Latin American martyrs of the late-20th century CE – Archbishop Oscar Romero, Rev. Rutillo Grande, SJ, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Jeanne Donovan, and Dorothy Kazel, and, nearly nine years later, the six Jesuits priests and their two working class women staff members at the University of Latin America in El Salvador, with the thousands of lesser known martyrs in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala – the centuries have been peopled with women and men who chose death over denial of their faith and their G-d. And for the recent martyrs of Latin America, failing to engage in the praxis of justice would have been just such a denial. Tertullian knew early on that “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” In these latter days, it has been the seed of the faith that does justice.

Most of us, however, will not hear or be expected to respond to a call to martyrdom – at least that’s true for most, if not all, of us in the US of North American “middle class” white population. And I would guess that the majority of US North Americans would utter a quiet but heart-felt “Thanks be to G-d” for that, happy, or at least relieved, to leave martyrdom, for the most part, to the earlier chapters of Christian (and Jewish) history.

At the same time, living life for G-d – living a holy life – isn’t “for martyrs only.” For, as G-d reminds us in innumerable ways, “But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, and formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name: You are Mine.” (Is. 43:1; emphasis added) Not only does G-d call us; made as we are, in the image and likeness of the Holy One, each of us has a special mission, a special place in the life of G-d. “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” (Augustine’s Confessions) Jesus missions and commissions His disciples to “heal those who are sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy, cast out demons.” (Mt. 10:7) Jesus calls His disciples to minister to people dealing with the most ordinary situations and needs of everyday life: Hunger, thirst, illness, grief, fear, isolation, imprisonment, loneliness, pain, loss, death. Furthermore, Jesus tells His disciples “’The gift you have received, give as a gift.’” (Mt. 10:8) In John’s Gospel, after giving the disciples the most profound yet simple lesson of what it means to be His disciple in the loving act of washing their feet, Jesus presents His disciples with a “’new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.’” (John:15:12) Jesus then says, “’There is no greater love than this: To lay down one’s life for one’s friend.’” (John 15:13) For John the Evangelist, following Christ is epitomized in the praxis of loving service, even if such loving service results in death, as it did for Christ His Lord.

So, for those of us who have heard and responded to G-d’s call in our lives, how do we deepen our life with G-d? How do we live Ad maiorem Dei Gloriam in our everyday lives ~~ lives that, when we really think about them, are, for the most part, fairly ordinary, with mundane tasks, mundane worries, daily concerns, griefs, and occasional joys? The very ordinariness of our lives leads many of us to utter sighs of relief. What we all too seldom grasp is that the very ordinariness of our lives is itself blessed by and infused with the Presence of the Holy. All that is is G-d’s creation, pronounced in the first chapter of Genesis to be “very good.” As we are part of that creation, we, too, are part of that goodness.

We meet G-d, and G-d meets us, in the very everydayness of our lives. We meet there because G-d meets us in our experience, and most of our experience consists of the daily-life-ness of our lives. G-d is able to encounter us only where we are, at each moment, not where we once were or where we intend or hope or plan to be an hour from now, or tomorrow, or next month or next year.

That may seem obvious, and it likely is. However, I’m not sure we really live that way, or recognize that G-d is there in the midst of it all. Because often, we ourselves aren’t there in the midst of it all! And that becomes increasingly true in the context of our post-modern world, a world increasingly mediated by an ever-increasing plethora of media.

CONTINUED...