Chapter 9 - Ms. Meg Wagner

Chapter 9 – Hope for the Public

It is fitting that we end our book study on The Company of Strangers with his final chapter, “Hope for the Public” as we enter Holy Week and our Easter season of hope. What does his hope look like now, 31 years later? What does ours look like?

In reflecting on this chapter and the book as a whole, I was drawn back to Lydia’s and others’ thoughts about social media. Lydia and I work with a generation of youth who have a much different view of “public” and “private” than we did growing up – and worlds different than the view our parents had. When grocery store “discount” tags came out that could track food purchases to improve marketing for stores, my father was apoplectic about the invasion of his privacy. Now the public/private line is all but eliminated. Everything from what you are eating, who you are dating and how it is going, who you are mad at, how you are struggling, and what gives you joy is all shared in the public sphere, through social media.

Marketers saw the worth of social media instantly, recognizing that a huge door was opening into potential consumers’ private lives. Churches have been much slower to embrace this way of connecting with parishioners. Facebook and Twitter have actually become huge tools in my ministry, and in many ways they are doorways into several of the things Palmer talks about in Chapter 9.

That “our culture supports spiritual and political forms of self-centeredness” (Palmer, 153) is still very true. What passes for hospitality in our public lives often is rooted in the marketplace, is focused on consumption or entertainment, and is all about what appeals to personal desire, choice, and taste. Between living in subdivisions as opposed to neighborhoods and working longer hours, our homes have increasingly become places of solitude and private retreat instead of hospitality.

How are we called to be the church in the world in a time like this? How do we move beyond society’s practices of hospitality, beyond a consumerist mentality, beyond being bland or generically welcoming or nice, and into a more deep and genuine expression of the ministry of hospitality as part of God’s church here in this place?

I believe that social media can be an important part of how we do that. Because of Facebook and Twitter I have a view into the personal weekday lives of people who go to my church. I know what has happened to people during the week and so I know what to ask about and who may be in crisis. I know who might need meals delivered because a family member is in the hospital, who should be on our prayer list, and whose accomplishments we should be celebrating. The people who use social media at my church remember birthdays and anniversaries, pray for each other, and find little ways to care for each other that they might never have known about had it not been posted online. My experience of church on Sunday is deepened by the engagement I have had with parishioners throughout the week. I see social media as a tool for deeper personal and public engagement and ministry with people, but not a replacement for it.

Palmer discusses solitude and prayer in this chapter and suggests that the church affirm, “vocally and vigorously, that time spent in solitary prayer and contemplation is just as valuable to the church’s mission as time spent meeting with committees or preparing pot-luck suppers” (Palmer, p. 157).  He writes that the church must be a place where the fruits of prayer and contemplation can be shared with each other. I agree and in our digitally connected world, I would push his ideas further. What if we had a vision of church that people felt they could connect to 24/7, that consistently affirmed the importance of personal prayer and contemplation? If the line between solitude and an intimate community of prayer and faith never felt further away from people than their phone or computer?

Our diocesan youth often feel that kind of connection with each other because of technology. Through text, video chat, Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter they can find support, laughter, and caring community pretty much any time of day. At my son’s high school, a group of boys took that idea even further and they use Twitter to support and encourage their classmates daily and combat bullying. @WestHighBros was featured on Good Morning America recently for their efforts and I’ve been thinking a lot recently about why more of our churches aren’t finding creative ways to minister to people in their daily lives the way these young men have.

Palmer begins and ends the book with Thomas Merton, “whose inward search was guided and formed by a community of faith” (Palmer, 164). My hope is that my church will nurture people’s inward spiritual life by continuing to reach outward, stretching the bounds of that faith community to include all the ways that people connect to each other today in their daily lives. It is what we practice each week in worship as we participate in God’s hospitality and welcome others to the table. We come together, not as individual consumers of worship, but as full participants in the shared work of the liturgy as we pray and sing together, confess our brokenness, pass the peace and share the Eucharist. Together in common worship we are both guests and hosts of God’s abundant welcome. My hope is of a church that carries God’s abundant welcome into the world all the time, and in as many ways as possible.

 

Meg Wagner serves as the Director of Christian Formation at Trinity Episcopal Church in Iowa City and is a postulant for the priesthood in the Diocese of Iowa. She is working on her MDiv through the distributed learning program at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.