Rediscovering Facebook

The one thing that is hard about public ministry as a stipendary priest is that, by definition, we work away from where we grew up and away from circles of friends that we have built over time. It is easier for me in some ways because Mrs Acular and I have been relatively nomadic for over the last decade or so, so friends tend always to be at a distance, geographically speaking. 

This is another way of saying that in the wake of priest's lives is a litany of names of friends long neglected and rarely seen. 

Today I sat for half an hour waiting for the fruits of my loins to learn not to drown.They are achieving this well and so I can withdraw from the Pool of Drowning safe in the knowledge that they will once again prevail. However, half an hour is insufficient time for anything other than idle daydreaming over a caffeine infusion of one sort or another.

Today I sat with my Gadget of Choice and pawed over the Facebook thing, and did something that I have never done before. I opened up my 'Friends' page and scanned down the list. On iPad, the pictures are big (rather that diddly little thumbnail shots) so I was able to see faces as opposed to blurry figures of people that looked vaguely familiar. It was a wonderful thing to have done.

The Facebook detractors would say that we gather 'Friends' from among those who we really have no connection, have never met and would never want to. I am one such detractor. I have claimed, on this blog, that we only really know a fraction of the plethora of folk we claim as Friends on Facebook - that the rest are a kind of statistical stocking filler. I think I was wrong in that assertion.

As I looked down the long list, I saw many faces. They are the faces of people I have either grown up with, people I have worked with, people I have sat behind a pint with, people who I love, people who I respect, people who knew me when I was a boy, as a man, as a retailer, as a theological student, as a worshipping Christian, as a blogger, people I have known all of my life and people who (although I may not have met them at all in person) are those with whom I have connected and remain so. In short, everyone on my Friends list is someone significant to me, someone who has a meaning in the context of my unworthy existence.

As I fast approach my 40th birthday (noting the many of my school friends who have already passed that great and momentous occasion), I often wonder 'where it all went'. I have a wonderful family, beautiful wife and kids, the work I was born to do, a wonderful context in which to do that work - and a Facebook Friends list. If I wondered 'where it all went', I needn't have worried. It isn't about the moments always, but about those faces and the encounters we have shared. 

When Two Worlds Collide

May the Lord bless social media, for this day it reunited two old friends.

I have just enjoyed a good chat with a former colleague, catching up on news and changes that affected both of us. Our families have found their life, and it is also fair to say that we are both fuller in the face than we were.

We worked together in my former life in flooring. I met him in west London when he was fairly  fresh into Britain (he is from Ghana) and looking for work, and I was the one who gave him a job. We worked together for several years in different places, me as his manager and he as my very gifted principal sales-person. I think we both helped one another pay the bills, if we are honest, and it was one of the sadnesses of a change of circumstances which meant that we went our separate ways a few years ago. 

He has gone onto bigger and better things, and so have I. He was always going to excel in marketting and his currently role reflects his seniority in that world. I am a vicar.     Poles apart ...

... or so you may think. 

We have been chatting half of the afternoon about how much our jobs are the same. He is a marketting executive in the world of dentistry, and yet we have both had almost identical conversations in our work-places of late. I have written about this stuff before, the quality of the "shop front" experience for those who visit our churches, as well as the 'business needs' of the church as organisation. Much of our work, in the distinct worlds that we move, is really very similar. Alarmingly similar!

So, this is a hasty post about the joys of social media. It is also one that observes a refreshing reminder that church and parish life is really rather similar to other aspects of 'normal' life. All in all a good afternoon!

Billy No-Mates

I wrote a rather waffly post yesterday about friends and friendliness. I ambled around the houses in a fairly lack-lustre way and for that I apologise. 

I was, however, left thinking about ministerial life and friends. 

I think it is regarded as 'best practice' as a parish priest (or equivalent) to not have specific friends from among the 'flock'. While it may seem an acceptable thing, it has the potential to become divisive - as there is a pastoral power-imbalance, and the danger in the perception of others even if not born out in facts.

I did a mental audit of my friends - in the corporeal sense, not the Facebook sense - and being a natural hermit, have a few but very close life-long friends. I have not been one for clouds of friends of barely-above-acquaintance level, as I like to be close to my friends, and that trust is not easily given by me. It reminded me how far away we all live. The wonderful Mrs Acular is my bezzy mate, and was before we married, and she is the exception. The rest have all migrated through life and work to all ends of the country, or we have - leaving them behind. I recognise that this is common for religious ministers (it might also be that we just frighten off all our friends)

This also explains another emerging thing - the prevalent presence of priests on things like Twitter and Blog-shire. We speak of a community of friends (not in the corporeal sense) in our Tweeting and Bleating, and this is, I think,  partly because all our real friends are so far away. It is hard for us to pop down the local for a swift half, without a month of planning. Ours is often a lonely job because of the way we are called to connect in a slight disconnected way. It is not a bad thing, just a cultural and professional-boundaries kind of thing. 

It is hard at times though. I'd love it if life meant I could see my closest friends more than annually, or in the case of one, less frequently. The good thing, I guess, is that when we do get back together, the gap is as nothing and it feels as if we only met the last time yesterday.