We spread a leopard-print blanket across the table for the still-life art project Erica will teach the kids from the local mission later that afternoon. She asks me about the pinched forehead, what is wrong.
Oh, the internet, I say, dropping buzzwords from Impromptu Sex Week and the Superbowl Beyoncé Flare-up and so on. I’m not explaining well, I’m fumbling and frustrated and can’t decide how I feel about anything. My gut-reactions don’t translate to formulated thoughts until much later and sometimes I want the noise, inside and outside, to just stop.
You know, you don’t have to do this, she says, her eyes all honesty and looking to the deep like always.
The afternoon sun flecks through high windows above a wall with hand-me-down paint onto hand-me-down chairs that sit in this room that was handed down to Erica to make a bit of beauty and a bit of difference in a city whose poverty and violence is downright ugly and shocking. The context of her words isn’t lost on me.
I am standing in the middle of as-real-as-it-gets Waco, talking about what to most is only a virtual reality.
And I know what she means, at the heart of it–there is a danger in spending your life and love online completely. And maybe there is a temptation to construct an online reading and writing life as a venue to simply “make a lovely little speech to yourself,” as a beloved professor once quoted.
This I understand, struggle with some days. Do I talk a good talk and trample my neighbor? If I debate and spin poetry and retweet and have not love, caritas, agape, the kind of love that acts and habits and moves and shakes: sharing blessedness and wills the Good to my neighbor (both on- and offline), then I am only a gong or a cymbal; I am nothing, I gain nothing.
You don’t have to do this.
This online thing. I know.
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But I do.
Because first of all, this isn’t virtual reality, a veneer, pontificating. The stuff I read and the stuff I hope to be writing is the stuff that composes your real life and mine, and it matters.
It matters.
Feminism, spiritual practices, abuse, relationships, parenting, growing up, sexual ethics, justice, racism, prayer and all of it. All of it affects and informs the way I live and love in that caritas-agape way. It is the perhaps the matter itself of that living and loving.
Because here is another beautiful and difficult thing about this online business:
we come with our bad and good rhetoric as well as our bad and good stories;
with our tempers and with our grace;
with our education and experience and sometimes without it;
with numbered lists and paragraphs and randomly bolded words;
we come with our best theology and our deepest hang-ups;
with our passion and with our reason;
with typos and flare-ups and words we didn’t mean;
with a dash of sacred profanity and the temptation to make the sacred profane;
with our heresy and our holiness;
with our arbitrary semi-colons and run-on sentences like this one.
It’s kind of a mess but isn’t that how life is?
So that means it takes a bit of bravery to navigate these waters at times for one reason or another, and I’m not the only one who thinks about giving it up sometimes. But I guess I’ll just say I’m not altogether afraid to get my heart a little too involved with my patience, my prayers, my compass and the stars to guide me.
Because like I said, these things matter, and with the humility, tenderness, care, and whole-hearted truth-seeking I have witnessed in my blogroll, I think these things can matter and manifest in a holy and faithful way, to lead us to the good work that needs to be done.
On- and offline.
I’ve seen a bit of magic and a lot of Church here, and I want to join the effort to pass the peace with the person sitting in this pixelated pew with me.
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when it all goes quiet behind my eyes, I see everything that made me flying around in invisible pieces.
–Beasts of the Southern Wild
The rest of the story is that I keep reading you people because there’s a whole mess of URLs undeniably threaded into this growth-history and future of mine and a big part of why I brush my teeth every morning next to the same God.
[and sometimes, every once in a while, online friends are real friends, too.]
So, cheers, Deeper Story and Prodigal and She Loves and Sarah and Suzannah and Micha and Rachel and Emily M. and Emily W. and Joy and Alise and Alece and Nish and Dianna and Leigh and Seth and Amber and Hilary and Margaret and Annie and Amy and Elora and Addie and Elizabeth and Alyssa and Shaney and Kiefer and of course Preston and the other lovely, ragged, brave, hollering, gentle, hella smart, pastoral, preachy, comforting ones that I haven’t named or known yet.
Thank you and keep going–keep changing my life.
A recent Baylor graduate, Antonia Terrazas is continuing her education deep in the heart of Waco, Texas by pursuing her Master’s in Being a Grownup with an emphasis in Not Leaving the Keys in the Door. She loves literature, yoga, coffee, theology, bright colors, and Tina Fey, just like everyone else. She blogs at stuffantoniasays.wordpress.com and tweets as @antoniaterrazas.
i like seeing your face in these parts! this is beautiful.
thank you much, Suzannah!
What a great post, Antonia. Timely for me. I’ve been feeling like permanently logging off the Internet this week and the sensation of having to always, always keep up. Not to mention the rage-y feelings I get. Thank you for the reminder of the good and the godly and life-affirming pieces as well. It can seem so silly to find God online and yet, so often these days, I really really do. Thank you thank you for this.
oh, I understand the keeping up thing for sure–and it really does help me to step away every once in a while, to make room for silence and a bit of peace (let’s be real though, I’m not great at it!) thanks, Lindsay!
Sic ‘em and Eshet Chayil to ministry in inner-city Waco. Love that beautiful, broken city.
I have no sage words about this faith bloggy sometimes-messy sometimes-lovely digital world, only a nod and an “I feel ya, girl” and a “thank you”.
holla to a fellow Waco-lover. It’s a crazy little place with a big piece of my heart. grateful for this solidarity all around.
You’re in my head. I feel like deleting my Facebook and blog all the time in pursuit of more face-to-face socializing. But then I remember that I can’t stop sharing and reading what God is doing. I was talking about my writing with my roommate last night, “I just want to write what is true. I hope I’m doing that.” You are, sister.
“I just want to write what is true.” What a great guideline. Thank you, Kristi.
Antonia, thank you for your post. I joined the blogosphere last year very reluctantly but do it for the same reasons you listed. I will definitely vbe adding you to my newsfeed. You can follow me @
revadele.blogspot.com and @revadele on twitter.
well, thank you! glad you’re sticking with it.
Antonia, thank you. For putting me in that list but also for all the ways you’re a bright light around this internet world. I’m glad you’re in Waco and here all at the same time.
Micha, that’s so kind. Thank you. So glad to be reading you, friend.
My ex-therapist tried to tell me that I don’t have to do the Internet thing either, neglecting to understand real friendships.
oh goodness. yup. that is one thing–it is really hard to explain to people who don’t do this kind of thing (even just reading!) Funnily enough, my closest face-to-face friends (Erica named above included) are pretty supportive. I do believe there is a balance to achieve, but that goes for all kinds of healthy friendships; it’s not just particular to online vs. offline.
Please please STAY! I totally get the desire to run away, far far away, but stay and keep adding the spice that only you can add to this crazy Internet soup dish. We need you and this amazing place because not all of us are surrounded by wisdom. For some, your words may be the only truth, no pressure. ha!
I too, am dropping bits of hope and hopefully goodness into the soup with my blog etc. The reading too randomly is what mess with me. Have to be careful, pick and choose with wisdom…not just stuff i’ll agree with, but stuff that comes through in love and honesty.
So yah, stay.
Susie
internet soup. I can get behind a food analogy! I’m with you. Thank you so much for the encouragement, Susie!
Please please STAY! I totally get the desire to run away, far far away, but stay and keep adding the spice that only you can add to this crazy Internet soup dish. We need you and this amazing place because not all of us are surrounded by wisdom. For some, your words may be the only truth, no pressure. ha!
I too, am dropping bits of hope and hopefully goodness into the soup with my blog etc. The reading too randomly is what mess with me. Have to be careful, pick and choose with wisdom…not just stuff i’ll agree with, but stuff that comes through in love and honesty.
So yah, stay.
Susie
I totally get this, Antonia. And I am so grateful for your voice. Bless you.
that’s good to hear from you, Emily. Thank you.
Maybe I need to keep this here in my head, or bookmark it to reread occasionally. I feel completely useless on the internets these days. I feel like I have nothing to contribute to the conversations.
Are you kidding me? Yet another brilliant young writer out here? I’m bowled over. Thanks for this beauty, this thoughtfulness and many blessings as you continue to do ministry in Waco and out here on the cyberwaves.
I really appreciated this post! I had a similar moment of “i give up” on the internets this morning. Grateful to be sharing cyberspace with you and your thoughts.
There’s so much more to life than the blogosphere.