The internet is overspread with billions of disembodied voices filling blogs, posting pics, and sitting back, waiting to be liked, expecting to be followed…praying to be noticed. It’s like we extend (suspend) our identities into this hypothetical actuality, hoping that the more room we take up—the more we press ourselves against this transparent, vapid window of cyberspace—somehow, the more we will matter. We hope that we, ourselves, will be MORE because our identities have been pixellated or because our thoughts have been et(h)ernally immortalized...
The rallying cry of bursts forth from the white-hot core of our I-obsessed culture:
"We blog, we tweet, we Google, therefore we matter!!!"
But the ethos is wrong.
Granted, I know a few writers who sparkle with wit and brilliance; bloggers that actually SPEAK into the void and create enlightenment. Certainly, those people say things that matter.
…I’m just not sure that I’m one of them.
Quite the contrary, I am a hypocrite seeking to name her temptation (with too many parentheticals).
I, too, have felt the cyber-need to assert my identity and voice my half-thoughts into the resounding echo.
But here, to my surprise, I have found not emptiness, but collection. Organization.
(like the creation account in Genesis one which patterns itself in seven days)
(….not to mention the convenience of storing all these thoughts in a neat little cyber-cubby)
“Where can I flee from your presence?” asks Psalm 139 “I stay up late and you’re there. I go online and you’re there. You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You notice me.”
Tucked away in the feedback on Genesis one, God says “make them in Our <span>image</span>.”
And then God likes us. That is VERY good.
Perhaps we can encounter God even in (and despite) our vain search for self.
We don't matter because of our blogging.
We matter because we are made.
(Blogging just....keeps our thoughts straight.)
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