Real Presence in a Virtual World

When my housegroup got together last week, we skyped with a couple who are spending a few months several states away with family. Michael and Terese and their kids are very much missed, and we wanted to connect with them and support them as they spend time with family members in difficult health situations.

We chatted about how they are doing and what we are all up to for a while, and then asked to pray for them. They asked one of us to scoot in closer so she was in the camera’s range, and the person who was going to pray made sure he was close in and in front of the camera, too. Then we all, on both ends of the skype, closed our eyes and prayed.

Now, I’m not going to argue that you have to close your eyes to pray. You don’t. But many of us do, and it struck me that after carefully arranging ourselves so everyone was included in the shot and could be seen, we all proceeded closed our eyes.

Why did it matter that we could all see each other if we were closing our eyes anyway?

Because without even thinking about it, we wanted to be together, to be present with each other before our Father.

Christians (as well as those who aren’t, I’m sure) tend to be confused about presence. On the one hand, we can have a neo-gnostic tendency to treat embodiment as only minimally important, since it’s the “spiritual” life that really matters. It’s part of a tendency to minimize physical reality and our bodies, if not to see them as an outright hindrance. 

This shows up perhaps most strongly in the ways we treat marriage as the only “safe” place to be embodied; our physicality is under suspicion in all other relationships. But it also shows up in our culture’s readiness to treat our physical selves as no more than accessories for our “real” selves, accessories that can be adjusted and changed (with enough money) to match our latest mood or the most current fashion. 

But we are fully physical as well as fully spiritual beings, and our bodies are an essential part of our selves.

Other strands of faith and practice elevate embodiment, prioritizing the physical proximity of the community in a geographic area. There’s an encouragement to live life together and to resist an individualism-based lifestyle that pulls people on their own trajectory regardless of the consequences to their geographic community, to those they share life with.

But in encouraging something that is good, this approach often misses something about presence, as well, I think. In idealizing a kind of pre-automobile, pre-easy-transportation lifestyle, it diminishes both the realities of the world we live in and how real presence is happening in new ways.

I’m not about to say that being physically present with friends and community doesn’t matter. But I am saying it’s not the only thing that really matters. It’s not the only path to real relationship and real intimacy, and it’s not the only kind of real presence.

The world most of us live in has a different geography than the one we learned about in school. In our everyday lives, we navigate a relational geography. It is described by the relationships we engage with more than the address where we sleep at night. 

For me, it includes the people I work with, my housegroup and to a lesser extent others in my church community, family members across the southeast who I talk with regularly by phone, and friends – some of whom live only blocks away and some of whom states away – who I engage with regularly. That engagement happens on facebook and by email, by text and by chat, on the phone and sometimes in person, and mostly by a mix of all those methods. 

The friendships that are most consistently in my life, that comprise my closest “neighbors” in relational geography, flow seamlessly between texts, calls, emails, and in-person connections on an almost daily basis.

Part of the reason they are so close is that they are present with me in so much of my life, no matter where they are physically at the time. 

And part of the reason other friends who live further away are still part of my relational geography at all is because of their presence in my life solely by virtual means. They are still really present, and my relationships with them are no less real because I rarely if ever see them in person.

The virtual world isn’t an imaginary place with imaginary relationships. It is a means to engage in real relationships with real people. 

Those real people lie sometimes, but they also love. They hurt others, and they are hurt. And they likely do all those same things in their off-line relationships. 

The beauty is that the virtual world creates a new place for us to connect – really connect – with people we wouldn’t or couldn’t connect with otherwise. That is also the challenge. It can stretch us if we let it, and it can expand our lives in ways we cannot imagine. The other doesn't always live next door.

How many people have discovered they are not alone online? How many have found the courage to own their wounds? To ask for help? To offer help? Like all real community, such positive outcomes aren’t always the case. Some also find the freedom to lash out, to take advantage of the vulnerable, to run from hard realities into a fantasy.

But none of that is any less true in “real life.”

In fact, it is all true in the virtual world precisely because it is true in real life. The choices we make to be really present to others in the virtual world will reflect the choices we make to be really present in all of life

We can choose to avoid that. We can choose to avoid the virtual world nearly entirely. But that won't get us off the hook of working to be really present any more than avoiding the "real" world in favor of a virtual world will.

The real question isn't will we engage the virtual world or not. The real question is are we willing to live in a world - virtual or "real" -  that's big enough to hold the other as well?

Chicago Love - 1

I love Chicago. I really do.

Yes, it's cold in the winter, but then there's cross country skiing and amazing Christmas lights and Marshall Field's Macy's store windows and the White Christmas Sing-a-long at the old Music Box Theater (complete with twinkling "stars" in the ceiling). If you let it, Chicago knows how to redeem winter.

(And don't look so surprised. Do you really think a Southerner could live very long in a city as food-crazy as Chicago and not love it? I mean really, this is the city that invented the dark chocolate bacon bar, and now that we've got Hickory River and Chick-fil-A, there's not much missing.)


So I've been thinking about all the reasons to love Chicago, and a few recent experiences have risen to the top.

The first is a trip I made downtown to explore the French Market, tucked in the west side of Ogilvie Transportation Center. I combined the market with a few hours of exploring some of the vintage stores near the Ukrainian Village, but the highlight was definitely the market. Things weren't bustling as much on Saturday afternoon as I'm sure they are during the work week, but it was a treat worth the trip. Not only did I have an amazing chocolate croissant to enjoy on the train ride home, but lunch was a Bánh mì - an amazing sandwich that is the result of the pollination of Vietnamese cuisine by French colonization. The French brought the baguette, and the Vietnamese gave it their own twist as an amazing sandwich, which Saigon Sisters in the French Market specializes in. The genius of the Bánh mì is the terrific salad of garnishes that it adds to the perfect crunch and chew of an authentic baguette. I got "The Porky" which is based on braised pork belly, and what's not to love about some awesome pork? Especially when it's ensconced in an environment that embodies so many perfect contrasts - the softness of the inside of the baguette with the wonderful chew of the crust, the crispness of the veggies, just enough spice with just enough sweetness. Mmmmm.
 

It’s important to remember…

Ever since the phrase “keeping Southern” occurred to me, I’ve been thinking about what it means. There are all sorts of things keeping Southern involves (many of them pertaining to food – and yes, posts on biscuits and cornbread and grits are coming), but if it’s just about doing stuff, what’s the point?

There’s an obvious analogy to “keeping kosher” here, not just in the parallel construction of the words, but in there being a purpose beyond the stuff you do that makes it meaningful to be doing it. For me, part of that purpose is remembering.

The beauty of Southern food isn’t really in its originality or nuevo-ness. The beauty of southern food is in its familiarity, its ability to invoke memory. After all, scent and taste are two of the most potent memory triggers we humans enjoy. Nuevo Southern cuisine only works when the creativity is undergirded by and infused with familiarity.

Remembering is a tricky thing, though. As both Jews and Southerners can attest, sometimes it means eating bitter herbs. There’s a song I love by Kate Campbell. It’s about the tensions and ambivalence in being Southern:

I was taught by elders wiser
Love your neighbor, love your God
Never saw a cross on fire
Never saw an angry mob
I saw sweet magnolia blossoms
I chased lightening bugs at night
Never dreaming others saw our way of life
In black and white

The chorus concludes: “It’s important to remember – to fly the flag half-mast – and look away.”

The “look away” is ambiguous. It’s what we do with things we don’t want to see or acknowledge. But Campbell is echoing “Dixie,” and in that it’s a looking toward with longing. For me, her song embodies looking to the hard, ugly things without letting go of the beautiful ones. Not letting either one blind us to the other.

I spent Labor Day weekend back in Chattanooga where I grew up, and I was reminded of why I so love that city (truly one of the great cities of the world). It’s a city that has renewed itself by listening to its people – who came up with the crazy idea of a world-class aquarium by remembering the river that started it all. More recently, the city has taken another step in developing the riverfront with The Passage, the largest public installation of Cherokee art in the country.  The Passage remembers the tragedy of the Trail of Tears, marking its beginning at Ross’s Landing in the heart of the city. It was designed by a team of Native American Artists from Oklahoma (where the Trail ended), and its dedication – called “Homecoming” – was attended by Western and Eastern band Cherokee Nation chiefs and representatives. It embraces a past of both beauty and pain, and in doing so, begins to redeem it for a different future.

That gets to the heart of what I mean by keeping Southern. Walking out remembering, not to relive or revive the past, but to redeem it.

A couple of days after I was in Chattanooga visiting The Passage, I was back in Chicago listening to a Native American talk about the immigration debate – “a lot of immigrants trying to decide what to do with more immigrants.” Mark Charles is Navajo who believes that if Native Americans voices and perspectives are not included in the American immigration reform discussion, whatever solutions may be put forward cannot be either “comprehensive” or “just.” It’s not a position about what should be done with immigrants, or reparations, or even being right. It’s a position about respect, and, perhaps most of all, remembering.

Mark has an analogy about how it feels to be a Native American living on a reservation:

[It] feels like I am an old grandmother who owns a very large house. It is a beautiful house with plenty of rooms and comfortable furniture. I am upstairs in my bedroom tired, weak and sick. Meanwhile there is a party going on in my house. It is a large party with plenty of food and drink, games and laughter. People are all throughout the house having a great time. Yet no one ever comes up to my room. No one comes in to say hello and no one stops to acknowledge that the house belongs to me. It is not even that I am sad that I cannot join in on the festivities, or that I would be unwelcome to come out of my room. It is that, no one comes to me. And at times I wonder if they even remember whose house they are in.

There is much to remember – and much that is not pretty. We must not turn away. But if we have the courage to remember, there is beauty to redeem, as well. The Cherokee Four Journey Directions. Magnolia blossoms. Lightening bugs at night.

Hummus and Cheerwine, or One More Reason to Love Chicago

A couple of months ago several friends and I attended a conference on diversity at North Park University. If there's anywhere to have a conference on diversity, North Park has got to be the place. It's located in Albany Park, a neighborhood in the city with the third most diverse population in the nation. At least forty languages are represented in its public schools. Swedes, Lebanese, Koreans, Mexicans, Guatemalans, Filipinos, Eastern Europeans, and many more rub shoulders on the sidewalks there every day.

The conference was "Diversity 101" for college students, so apart from the keynote by Brenda Salter-McNeil, it wasn't the highlight for me. The best part of the day came at lunch, when two friends who attend North Park Theological Seminary took us to one of their favorite lunch spots, Dawali Mediterranean Kitchen.

The first time I can remember having Middle Eastern food was a falafel pita from a street vendor in New York City on a trip in high school. It was amazing, but I was hard-pressed to find much that was similar back home in Chattanooga. So the wealth of Middle Eastern options in Chicago has been a wonderful treat - from Pita Inn for one of the best short order traditional menus on a budget, to Noon O Kabob for Persian home cooking, to Roti Mediterranean Grill for a fresh Middle Eastern take on the Chipotle concept. Hummus has been one of my main staples for several years now. It's healthy, easy to make (though I'm still perfecting my recipe), and delicious, especially the roasted red pepper variety which I think of as a healthy, Middle Eastern version of pimento cheese. I spread it on toast for breakfast, eat it with carrots or pretzles for a snack, and spread it on sandwiches for dinner. Very few days go by when I don't eat hummus.

The great thing about Middle Eastern food is that at its heart, it's really just terrific home cooking. When it comes to keeping Southern, that's really what it's all about - not refusing to eat beans if they weren't cooked with a ham hock and served with cornbread, but relishing the simple, homey dishes that have been perfected by daily practice. If tradition becomes a boundary I won't venture beyond, life is small. I'd rather see keeping Southern as both a compass point by which I can orient myself on the journey and the tools that help me discover all the wonders to be found on the way.

Which brings me back to Dawali. The hummus is some of the best I've had, and the falafel is terrific. But the real surprise came when I walked over to the soda fountain to get my water and glanced in the drink cooler next to it. There beside the "vintage" glass bottles of Green River and Bubble Up was Cheerwine. Yep. Cheerwine. It doesn't get more Carolina than Cheerwine, my favorite "coke"* for as long as I can remember. We used to bring it back to Tennessee when we'd visit family in North Carolina, because you couldn't even get it in Chattanooga.

And here, in a Middle Eastern restaurant in the middle of Albany Park in Chicago, was Cheerwine. I immediately took one over to the man at the register, put it on the counter, and just said "Cheerwine?!?!?!?" He just grinned and said, "We love it, so we had to have it!"

Chicago. I've gotta love it. Where else would I find a bit of Southern in a neighborhood with pretty much everything but!


*In the South, all soft drinks are "cokes," like all facial tissues are "kleenex."