What are we doing? A small sample of answers

by Mr. Sheehy

What are we doing here on this Internet, talking to one another, writing our stories?

I have seen a few interesting ideas the last couple days, and since I know most of the shared material from my Google Reader goes unread, I thought I’d throw down a few articles I’ve seen recently that explore these general questions: What are we doing, and what is the most wise thing for us to be doing?

First of all, my old college adviser  has lamented before about the limitations of blogs. (Why I insist on calling him “my old adviser” instead of simply naming him, especially considering he wouldn’t even remember me, I don’t know. I am not much of a name dropper, but I feel in some way that I should justify the reason I am constantly referring to him. Alas, I will use the phrasing again today.) Recently he presented some interesting ideas about how the structure of blogs could be rethought to allow great ideas and writing to dominate the real estate, rather than just the newest writing. I have tried to do this on my own through my “Featured Posts” widget, which are not the most popular posts I have written, but ones where I thought I presented an intriguing idea, or wrote particularly well, or where I simply liked it enough that I wanted others to read it. What if the blog had a built-in technology to help me select which pieces are the best? That would be cool, and if anyone can develop it, it’s probably the folks at WordPress.

Also seen on Jacobs’s blog, a fantastic knock on the awkwardness of Facebook. I like Facebook, as it has been a way for me to keep in touch in a silly way with my brother and a few other significant friends from my past, but as more and more folks whom I would never offend by denying as a “friend” add me and clog up the Facebook feed, the stupider the application becomes, and the funnier I find this video.

Another important question as folks like Richardson discuss “why we absolutely need to consider these technologies and make them a part of our own practice” is, how much (and should) these technologies enter our classrooms? It’s a different question for a university professor, and that’s why Jacobs’s answer is significantly different than mine, but it’s a legitimate question that still deserves exploration. Having ingrained technology deep into my practice and the activities of my students, and now having slowly woven it out (mostly due to a lack of resources), I cannot say I miss it terribly or that I think my students are being robbed of something significant.

Is it a waste of time, then–in particular, all this blogging? Jessica Mesman Griffith makes a nice case that our little memoirs are not a waste of time, and if I were trying to explain more thoroughly how blogging does not necessarily feed the narcissism of our culture, I would probably use this post to help me frame my argument:

The value of memoir is in treating our individual humanity with the seriousness it deserves. There’s plenty of room for self-deprecation, but we should also value individual experience as instructive, both for our own spiritual development and for what that experience might offer another, for the value of our testimony.

That’s where my argument ended when I first wrote this article, but a day later I reached the end of my current issue of First Things, which means I was reading The Public Square, a vast column that Richard John Neuhaus used to write surveying religion, culture, and public life in general. Neuhaus passed away on January 8th, and knowing he had recurring cancer, his last comments in his column addressed the gravity of his illness. Among his other wonderful words, he addressed this issue of how we’re using our time, writing away little bits and blurbs about this and that:

The question has occurred to me that, if I have but a little time to live, should I be spending it writing this column. I have heard it attributed to figures as various as Brother Lawrence and Martin Luther—when asked what they would do if they knew they were going to die tomorrow, they answered that they would plant a tree and say their prayers. (Luther is supposed to have added that he would quaff his favored beer.) Maybe I have, at least metaphorically, planted a few trees, and certainly I am saying my prayers.

I have always wanted to be a writer and in a sense considered myself a writer. Amusingly, if I were extended a chance today to enter a writing profession I might not be interested, because it would not afford me the creative flexibility I have here, on my own blog. Little audience or no audience, there is something wonderful about writing a kind of memoir, of writing my own E.B. White essays of life, minus any worry about target audience and circulation numbers. I thus pluck along with a blog, sharing my own experiences, hoping they might prove “instructive” or at least amusing for one other. Maybe my best work could even be a type of tree, planted as I say my own prayers. Since I am still in my early 30s and, Lord willing, have much left to write, I am grateful for this medium that has arisen just in time for me.

Thanks for reading.