Online Isolation

This year I decided to quit Facebook for Lent.

I was raised Catholic but I'm not particularly religious* and don't often observe Lent but it's a handy time to consider your behaviours and indulgences if the mood takes you and I had been spending faaaaar too much time staring blankly at social media.

It isn't as though anything particularly Earth-shaking was happening on Facebook, there weren't many people posting huge life events and the stuff they were sharing ran from interesting and/or amusing to repetitive and/or boring.
The stuff that was happening on Facebook wasn't the real problem, it was the 'maybe something interesting will happen, better keep checking' impulse.

This impulse first manifested itself earlier in my life as 'maybe the next music video on Rage won't suck so much' and could lead to sitting up until 2am until I realised that the odd video that I enjoyed wasn't really worth the shit ones I was sitting through to get to them.

So when I really took the time to notice that I was wasting an inordinate amount of time checking, hitting refresh, and scrolling about on Facebook just in case something of note happened I figured this was a good chance to stop with that shit and have a crack at actually doing something myself.

Some people reacted with surprise when I said I was doing it, warned me I'd miss out on things, said they wouldn't be able to do it themselves and then looked sly so I know when I log back in there will be hundreds of notifications awaiting me because everyone I know is a bastard.

Other people, who have militantly resisted joining Facebook, took me into their arms like a long-lost loved one who had escaped a cult and spoke to me soothingly of how much bullshit I'll be freeing myself from and how I'll no longer be providing free market research for an unloving corporate monster.

The reaction that really stunned me was when people found out that I was still using Twitter.

"But that's CHEATING!" they cried. "You might as well not have bothered!"

Uh, no, I gave up Facebook because I was wasting time waiting for it to produce results.
Twitter is interesting and a lot quicker to flick through, harvest and step away from.

Besides, it was like telling people you're giving up coffee and then having them incensed because you're still drinking tea and hot chocolate.

"Next time," they declared, "You should give up the whole internet! Do it properly!"

Give up the internet for 40 days?

Yes, I'm sure I could but it would make life a lot more difficult in some fairly key ways.

I do all my banking online, phone books are no longer physical, research for travel or restaurants or events or even my work would be made almost impossible.

It wasn't so much that they thought I should give up the whole recreational aspect of the internet that took me aback, it was the fact that they already assumed that was what I was doing.

As if giving up Facebook meant giving up the internet.

As if Facebook was the internet.

I hadn't known until then that that's the way a lot of people see it. That Facebook is the only part of a vast sea of information that they have regular and intimate contact with.

It's both fascinating and a little bit worrying.

I know I am missing out on a few things because once people have announced things on Facebook they forget to say things in person but it's made conversations a lot more engaging because when I talk to people now they have news to share which I haven't heard, even if they have to be prompted to remember I won't know it yet.

When you're on Facebook you have a lot of conversations that go:
"Hey, what've you been up to?"
"Oh well I've got that new job."
"Oh yeah, you put up that big post about it."
"...Yeah."
And that's it.
Because you already know.

I've sent and received a lot more text messages and emails since I've been off.

People have casually mentioned how much more effort it is remembering to forward things separately if they want to share with me, not in an accusatory fashion, but in surprise as if they hadn't realised how much they depended on Facebook to inform people, to arrange meetings and events, and even as a primary medium for private messages.

Apart from ease of communication, I haven't particularly missed it, and I have really enjoyed how much my being absent from it has bugged some people.

When I go back I think I'll be a lot more casual about it, at least I hope I will be.
It might take a few deliberate reminders to keep me from falling into old ways.

In the meantime I'll enjoy the next... 28 days of freedom and prepare myself for the ridiculous deluge of tags and posts that the assholes I lovingly call friends have carefully curated for me in my absence.

And I'll have to work out whether I want to suppress or foster the urge to write smug posts about my time away, partly as revenge for all the tags they'll have accosted me with and partly because, like everyone I know, I am essentially a bastard.



*My beliefs in marriage equality and assumptions that a divine being would have better things to do than keep a list of things he doesn't want you doing to each other's fun bits keeping me from embracing organised religion too closely.

Divine Providence

I've just got a new TV/entertainment system cabinet because my cousin is becoming a nun!

Uh... I haven't bought it in celebration of her upcoming novitiate.

In August she's entering the convent for her three months of contemplation/extra meditation/xtreme nunning and as such she's been busily giving away her superfluous worldly goods*.

I expect I'm supposed to say I was surprised when she told me what she was planning but I honestly wasn't.

That's not to say I've ever looked at her and thought 'girl is gonna end up a nun'.

She's an attractive, accomplished and personable woman with all sorts of life paths open to her and whilst she's been a practicing Catholic for years she's never been overtly religious or expressed any prior intentions in this direction.

But I can see how it makes sense for her.

And she's one of the few people I know who has the personality, the temperament and the sense of moral responsibility to carry it through.

She's been a teacher for almost 10 years and in that time she's helped a heck of a lot of people, in the course of her work at the school, within her community and parish, and by donating her time to teaching disadvantaged children in other countries on working holidays.

She's been on several pilgrimages with our Grandmother** which I thought she was undertaking predominantly as an aide/chaperone to help 80-to-85-year-old Grandma get around the less accessible parts of the Holy Land, but they obviously stuck with her personally.

She's always been a spiritual person, not a preachy person but an introspective/meditative one and she has a firm sense of social justice.

When I said 'moral responsibility' I didn't mean it in the self-righteousness or blinkered morality way that some might use it, I meant that she is the kind of person to take responsibility for her own actions, to act for the good of others and to take a religious position seriously as an act of service to the community as well as to the church.

I think she'll do well in the vocation if she chooses to take vows and she'll do a lot to help others who need help without asking anything of them in return***.

I'm happy for her.

I am also not unhappy for me and my new TV/entertainment system cabinet.

I've been meaning to get one for ages but never really got around to it...



*most of her furniture, kitchen bits, books and DVDs, anything without deep emotional or personal meaning

**who has entered the pilgrimage phase of being an Italian/Irish matriarch

***up to and including not expecting people to pay lip service to religion in order to receive help, that is not her style

Evolution Revolution

I've never quite been able to wrap my head around why some religious folks are so dead-set against the concept of evolution.
Every time it pops up in the news cycle, causes controversy in regards to schooling or is cited as a source of conflict between community members or different communities, I get all scrunchy face-level baffled.
Why can't science and spirituality be considered together?
As if it isn't possible to believe in both the slow unfolding of the cosmos and all that follows AND a supreme being?

The spontaneous creation of a universe and a world with a fully functioning ecosystem would be an impressive display of power and has formed an important part of the Judaeo-Christian story (amongst others) but there are so many ways to look at it.

The religious texts say that God created the world in six days and the orthodox faithful refuse to accept any alternatives but consider this usage of a time-frame.
In the beginning there was no time, no temporal units in the dense new matter, who is to say how long the 'days' mentioned actually lasted? They could have each spanned millennia, hundreds of millennia, after all 'a day' is a human concept based on how long it takes one particular planet to make a full revolution as it makes its slow way around one particular star.

Some argue that insisting that life evolved from the most basic common components into gradually more complex and diverse organisms as a reaction to their environment, food stuffs and predators/competitors disrespects or denies the involvement of a deity but that doesn't have to be the case.
Why wouldn't a being of infinite wisdom and compassion also be a being of infinite curiosity?
If you've got nothing but time and a whole universe to yourself why wouldn't you nudge things and wait to see what happens next?
Why wouldn't the slow playing out of consequences be as fascinating and satisfying to a divine being as to anyone who has ever taken a chance and made something new under their own power, from artisan to scientist to chef?

At its most essential, the idea that God created the universe in order to create the Earth purely to put human beings on it seems very self-centred and egotistical on behalf of humanity, and seems to glorify humans more than their creator.
If you allow yourself to contemplate the possibility that human beings were not the intended end product of creation it doesn't automatically follow that there is no power outside ourselves and that it might not care for us.
Just because a parent doesn't know how their child will turn out, can't anticipate their exact physical characteristics or personality or future actions doesn't mean they can't rejoice at their birth and revel in their accomplishments.
Just because everything might not have sprung fully formed into being doesn't mean that its existence is not a point of wonder - consider the scope of the whole.

I'm not saying that atheists or agnostics have to believe that there is a God or a pantheon of gods.
I'm not saying religiously observant people have to accept everything that science has to offer or believe that we'll ever be able to explain everything that makes up our reality.
Just to all have a think about it and accept that whether you are looking at the universe through an analytical or spiritual lens, it is a miraculous construct.

We've come a long way as a species in the centuries since the current dominant religious dialogues were founded, we're now able to understand much more complex ideas and maybe that includes being able to grasp a more intricate explanation of existence no matter how you're framing it.

To the religious: Give God credit for possibly being a more inquisitive and creative being and for the creation story we began with maybe being the most complicated explanation fallible human beings were capable of dealing with at the time.

To the scientific: Seeing as even our best guesses concerning the beginning of the universe essentially boil down to 'there was nothing and then it blew up' try not to discount or dismiss other people's beliefs out of hand even if you don't share them.

To everyone: The fact that we exist at all is pretty freaking amazing, enjoy it and if you hold your beliefs dear then you shouldn't worry or feel threatened when other people don't share them as long as nobody tries to force you to accept their view against your will. Allow everyone the chance to make up their own minds on the matter.

For myself, well, as Nick Cave says, "I don't believe in an interventionist God, but I know darlin' that [some of] you do..."
Doesn't mean we can't all get along and acknowledge that no matter how it came into being, the universe is a mind-boggling and marvellous thing.

The discovery that the sun revolves around the Earth instead of vice versa didn't cause the Earth to be rent asunder, scientific discovery need not be seen as a reductive or destructive force.
With everything new we learn, it increases not decreases our ability to appreciate and marvel at the intricacy of our wider environment and of our own physical beings.
That has to count for something.



Disclaimer time: I was raised in an Irish-Italian family which, whilst fairly laid back about observing religion and very tolerant of all religious and non-religious views, allowed me a front seat view on Catholic dogma and communities.
I tell you this so that if you read this and feel that my soul might need saving or think that I would benefit from a deeper knowledge of Christianity you can rest easy that I am fairly familiar with the material. Please do not try to convert or convince me as I'll not be changing my views for any reasons that are not my own.
I also tell you this so that if you read this and you are non-religious or follow a religion not encompassed by this post you don't feel that I am trying to convert you, disrespect your beliefs or lecture you. My own beliefs are a composite of many strains of both scientific and spiritual discussion and I won't be turning this blog into any form of evangelical podium.
I am at heart a bit of a hippie who believes that as long as you do no harm to others as far as this is possible and do what you can to lead a fulfilling life and live up to your full potential that whatever you believe is your own business.
Sorry for the big rambling explanation but seeing as I don't usually cover topics quite so contentious here I thought I should make sure I made myself clear.
In the event any insulting or close-minded comments appear rest assured they'll disappear shortly after.

Of Course We're The Real Deal! Would We Lie To You?

I tend to take a sort of ‘we’re all screwed anyway’ view when it comes to religion.

Any religion you’re part of will claim that it is the ‘one true’ religion and all the others are just so much snake oil and hen’s teeth and mumbo jumbo.

This is all good and well for you if you happen to be a member of the one true religion that gets to assign you your afterlife accommodation but what if you’re not? What if the rules you’ve been diligently following your entire life has had someone somewhere getting very tetchy and making copious and snarky notes on what the heck you’ve been playing at?

And what if you are part of the one true religion that is the one true religion except you’ve been following the wrong tenets?
How do you know which bits of your rambling, multi-authored, badly edited, 'everything is a metaphor except for the bits that aren’t metaphors and are deadly serious guidance for life' text are the ones you should be observing? What about the ones that kind of contradict each other?

There are great chunks of my one true religion’s teachings that I sort of just ignore on the basis that they were recorded about 2000 years ago by fallible humans who may have been trying to give themselves a social leg up as they jotted down what they thought they’d been told. I assume that any being great enough to create a universe wouldn’t be too petty about that sort of thing. Of course I might be wrong.

Depending on which angle you're coming at it from it could be sort of like when you are pulled over for speeding by the police and you’re sitting there being given the treatment and want to protest or give an explanation but in your guilty heart you know that you knew what you did was wrong, that you had been told it was wrong and haven’t a leg to stand on.
Or even worse, it could be like getting charged for committing an offence you weren't aware existed in a foreign country and still having no legs for standing type activities as I've been reliably informed that ignorance of foreign laws isn't a valid defence.
If we are all being closely watched by a cosmic notary - who has a list of virtues and failings all being ticked off as we muddle our way along - they're probably not much for excuses or leniency.

If I shuffle off my mortal coil and find myself face to face (or incorporeal equivalent) with an admissions clerk tapping its pen beside the column that lists how many adulterers I failed to stone I expect I’ll be told that I have only myself to blame.

Three By Three

This story was written to meet Erin Palette’s challenge to create something inspired by the sentence Witch children fallow the elder's footsteps which is just all sorts of awesome all by itself.

Just to clear up any confusion, in Australia biscuits can mean 'crackers' or 'cookies' and has nothing to do with those bready things Americans are talking about when they say 'biscuits and gravy'. Don't tell me it's confusing. How do you tell the difference between gas for the car and gas for the oven? Well there you go.

***

Three has always been a number of power; from the pagan religions and cults through to today's modern incarnations, even the larger more orthodox 'cults'.
The three aspects of the goddess: maiden, mother and crone.
The three faces of God: Yaweh, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
The neat way that 1 + 2 = 3, which is also the number that follows 2... Not quite as dogmatically significant but still kinda neat...

When the three women fell pregnant around the same time, no one thought very much about it.
There were a few jokes about the friskifying powers of spring and the good old fashioned tradition of 'making your own entertainment' but nothing was thought to be out of the ordinary.

When they began to swell at a surprising rate - pale haired Meg, dark skinned Sarah and fiery Janet - there was some comment but usually to the tune of badly judged jokes by their spouses which led to some fairly heated verbal smackdown but little else until the ultrasounds showed that one of... two of... all three of the women were carrying triplets.
Then talk began to flow.

"Just seems a little odd, doesn't it?"
"Not really. The government is putting fertility drugs in the water supplies,"
"Oh don't be silly,"
"They are! Birth rates have been dropping for years and this is the easiest way to make sure we replenish our own population without actually paying people to have more babies, which would just encourage the wrong sort anyway,"
"Are you going to get onto your damn immigration conspiracy theories again?"
"They're not conspiracy theories!"
"Oh for the love of God!"

Everyone liked to think of themselves as living in a small town - despite the fact that in a few years the edges of the city would reach out to gather them up and make them into an outlying suburb - and Father Mark was happy to play the part of the small town priest.
He rode a bicycle because people liked to see him wobbling along on it with his neatly ironed shirt and slacks and the somehow incongruous safety helmet.
He kept a neat front garden and a vegie patch out the back and spent a lot of time pottering around in them so that people could stop and have a chat over the fence.
He could even drop by and pay visits to parishioners and non-church goers alike for a chat and a cup of tea without ever making anyone feel as if he was sizing them up or trying to save their soul against their will.
He was a gentleman of the old school, he was of an older school than he seemed.
Meg, Sarah and Janet were all grateful for his pragmatic, measured words and the simple, bachelor-grade biscuits he would bring round as a gift. The recipe was basic but by virtue of many years of experimentation, Father Mark said, he had hit upon a mixture that was tasty nonetheless. He was right, it was.

When all three women went into labour on the same night, there was talk again but no one could really work themselves up into much of a tizzy about it. Sitting in front of the TV, passing comment on the event, it felt too Twilight Zone to think of it as anything other than a strange coincidence.
It wasn't as if it was the third day of the third month of a third year. It was the 14th of August. Not an especially portentous day as far as anyone could tell.
"Psychosomatic," said Belinda Chapman, who had taken one unit of Psychology in her first year of university and who was eager to show the breadth and depth of her knowledge to Sam Nicolls. Luckily for her, Sam was much more interested in the breadth and depth of other parts of Belinda.

In the early hours of the morning, in the maternity wards of the same city hospital, each woman gave birth to three small but healthy children.
Two girls and one boy to Sarah.
Two boys and one girl to Meg.
Two girls and one boy to Janet.
There was to be a story on the local news about multiple birth families and a film crew popped around a few days later to take some footage of the three new mothers and their children. But when the story was aired their time was cut to a few cutesy shots of the tired mothers cradling their babies to make way for more time watching the two sets of identical twins of a nearby town run around their school yard.

As the children grew and the new mothers became more adept at juggling the needs of three children apiece and herding them about, the locals became used to the sight of ridiculous multi-seat strollers, then small overactive children on those odd 'kiddie leads' and then just to the different women wandering about, each with an orbiting collection of kids; sometimes just their own, sometimes a mixture.
Given the situation it would have been stupid not to pool their resources and often Meg and Sarah would mind the brood whilst Janet braved the supermarket on their behalf or Sarah and Janet would sit and chat whilst Meg grabbed a few hours sleep and so on and so forth.
And always Father Mark would pop around for a chat and a cuppa and to leave a tin of his biscuits, which the children were always trying to get their hands on.
"You've got to tell me what you put in these, Mark," Sarah said one day when they were all sitting in the yard watching the four year olds run around and scream at shadows and pretend that the dog was a great bear.
"Oh no, you've got to let an old man have some secrets. I've precious little of the housekeeping arts mastered but I know how to make a batch of biscuits."
"Can you at least give me a hint?" Sarah persisted.
"It might be a touch of herbs or spices,"
"Like what?" Meg asked.
"Oh, mostly marijuana,"
He roared with laughter as Janet spluttered her tea and wiped tears from his face as the children looked around to see what was going on and then got on with their games.

The only primary school in town was Catholic but apart from the usual association with plaid this entailed, it didn't make a big deal of the fact. So when time came for the kids to all be sent out of the house and into their education that was where they all went.
And next door to the school Father Mark tended his garden and baked his biscuits and would nod to the children as they ran past his gate in a jumble, laughing and shouting on their way to school.

There was none of that 'mystical twin business', no knowing when another was in pain when they weren't there or reading each other's minds; but it was inevitable that the children would feel a bond. They had grown up together, spent so much time together that each felt themselves to be one of nine rather of one of three.
It was handy to have so many willing participants in re-enactments of favourite movies, in pitched battles to the death between pirates and whatever they decided was fighting the pirates today, and to play make-believe down the back of Meg's garden.
There was a hollow under a cluster of bushes where they could all fit, sitting cross-legged in a circle and murmuring to each other in the solemn, serious way of children everywhere engaged in rebuilding the mysteries of life from scratch and assigning themselves important duties in this new world order.
Father Mark would hear them chanting and stifling giggles as he wandered up the driveway to see their parents and he would smile to himself and laugh a little with them.

When Meg started making noises about finally clearing out the bottom of the yard the kids were up in arms and told her that she couldn't, that they were going to make their own garden, that Father Mark would show them how and that no one was allowed to wreck it!
When Meg raised an eyebrow and asked whether anyone had actually asked Father Mark about this the kids all just shrugged.
Father Mark said he'd be happy to give the kids some pointers and make sure that they didn't try to plant any giant's beanstalks. And he came around with some tools, some fertiliser and a tin of biscuits for the busy gardeners who were busy carefully setting up a small fence around their new garden, in front of the old bushes.

They grew some simple vegetables in rows with little herb plants dotted amongst and around them, some for the kitchen and some just for scent and flowers. For the girls mostly, Father Mark explained, because what little girl wouldn't like a bit of colour and life in a garden.
And he taught them how to tell when the vegetables were ripe so that they could proudly carry in baskets of fresh produce to their appropriately admiring parents.
And he taught them when to plant and when to pick from the smaller plants, some of the uses that herbs could be put to in the kitchen and home and the old names by which they had once been known.
And shooing Meg and Sarah out of the kitchen one day with a conspiratorial grin, he extracted double-pinky promises from each of the children and he taught them how to make his biscuits.
And periodically after that the children would take over one kitchen or another and the scent of baking never completely faded from any of the homes.

When the children were ten and the 'shake and bake' planned communities creeping out from the city were within plain eyesight, it was announced that a new freeway was to be built to help connect the city and it's ever spreading fiefdoms.
It was to cut through the last of the countryside between the city and the town and whilst the suspiciously enthusiastic local member of government assured them that it would bring fresh money to the economy and fresh opportunities to the community, the image in most people's minds was that of great semi-trailers belching black smoke and riding their airbrakes on their way past.

The surveyors turned up and had a few patches of bad luck. It rained for three weeks for the first time in over fifty years. The ground became boggy and impossible to negotiate.
One man set up a tripod and stepped back to get a bit of a feel for the angle it was on and watched it disappear into a forgotten mine shaft which had opened up just as he was back on firm land.
Small marsupials and rare birds thought to have left the area decades ago were found nesting, foraging and breeding all the way across the bushlands that the freeway was to cut through.
Protestors from the city hired buses and drove out to campaign against the freeway, bringing their signs and their chants. And Father Mark would set up a table in the school yard where the groups would gather before their marches and he dispensed cups of tea whilst the children trotted around with plates of biscuits, bright-faced and helpful. Janet, Meg and Sarah watched with indulgent smiles as their self-proclaimed little 'Greenies' did their bit to save the environment.

Under the pressure of mass public opinion, conservation laws and the eye of the Nation, the Premier announced the scrapping of the freeway plan and the unveiling of the new plan to resurface the existing highway and add two more lanes, which would barely impact on the current environmental conditions at all whilst still providing the increase in services that he had promised to the people he was proud to serve.

When it came time for the kids to start high school in the next town over, Meg, Sarah and Janet fussed a little, bought them their new uniforms and sent them off on the bus. And when Father Mark went by on his bike, he stopped a moment at each house to share their wonder at how quickly children grow up and to reassure them that the kids would be just fine with this new phase in their lives.

There was a bit of a to do some time later when Brian Marsden, an unimaginative but persistent jerk-butt - as one of the girls put it - from the new school managed to fall down a flight of stairs all by himself in full view of the playground and in the process broke a leg, an arm and gathered himself a concussion.
Meg, Sarah and Janet tried tactfully to make sure that the kids weren't upset by this turn of events and independently tried to start one of those 'talks' that adults give to children when they're not quite sure what point they're trying to make but they're sure that one should be made.
The kids said that they were fine, Brian Marsden was a jerk-butt and no one minded that he had fallen down the stairs. And Meg's daughter didn't come home with red eyes or blotchy cheeks any more.
Father Mark dropped around and had a quiet word on how they were all God's children and should care for each other and not be glad or indifferent to hear of someone else's suffering, even if they were a jerk-butt.
No one else fell down any stairs after that but Brian Marsden kept his distance all the same.

And the town rolled on as the children grew and the city crept no closer as there was now a National park between it and the town. The small local businesses did well enough for themselves that people could stay and raise their families and not have to commute or move for work. And Father Mark wobbled around on his bicycle and worked in his front garden and every now and then one of the girls would pop around and bring him a tin of biscuits and he would laugh and thank them.

All too soon the kids were getting their Learner's Permits and taking it in turns to pester their parents for driving practice around the streets of the town and out onto the carefully maintained highway, making plans for what they would do when they got out of school, talking of travel, of study.
And Father Mark knew that it wouldn't be long until the kids scattered, went out into the world as young adults and started to find their own way. But it had been a good sixteen years and he had at least another two before the twin spirits of 'progress' and 'change' would begin to creep back in to this little corner of the world which he had cosseted and protected.
And wherever the children went they would carry a little of his knowledge with them and one day, when each of them found a place to settle down, they could plant a little garden, even just a few pots of a few different herbs and they could teach their children to make biscuits.