Faces and Books
“He is the image (face) of the invisible God. In him all things hold together.”
“There are many other things Jesus did. If every one of them were written down, I suppose the world could not contain the books that would be written.”
Social media and the generations: my media savvy daughter-in-law-and sons nobly tried to give me a quick tutorial. My take on their take. Many crossovers, yet Gen X somewhat (1965-80) and Boomers a lot (1946-64): Facebook. Millennials (1981-2000): Instagram, Snapchat. Twitter: often the medium for snarky and mean comments (ageless). Texting: for all to get to the point. Anyhow, showing my age, I am clearly a face and book guy.
FACES: Recently, 30 or so 1966 Ensley High grads gathered for lunch at The Club (time warp!). 5 or 6 of those faces, even with time ‘a-line-ment’, pretty much persist now like then. Of those faces, I had the get-to of seeing in my Canterbury UMC years: Susan Proctor Rives, Susan Scott Wilborn & Barney Wilborn. Most of the rest, I couldn’t have picked from a line up…nor they, me.
Sigh…doxology for the life lines of our faces. Our face ridges imprint what has made us laugh and cry, line out joys and hurts we have seen. The face and neck work of gravity books the Olympic price we pay for keeping on keeping on.
On a Mall jaunt, Dianne and I chuckled at a display of a pricey cosmetic. Nightly droplets of this potion on our face for a couple weeks promise to erase the wrinkle record of our lives…Right.
My view is if our faces don’t begin ‘lining up’ after two or three decades, we are not paying attention. Perhaps there is some sort of algorithm of what our faces reveal and conceal about us, probably inverse to what we think. Yet, I believe God, who shows his face and love in Jesus, makes crucifying/resurrecting efforts to show a bit of that face and love in the crinkly stories of your and my face.
BOOKS: Some of you know my musings on such as bibliotherapy, book providence, and book synchronicity. How books help us grow and heal. How somehow unplanned, the ‘right’ book shows up at the ‘right, ripe’ time we need it. My sense is this is not only for our personal plights but our political challenges.
We are not the first to wonder whether rapid receipt of information undermines care-full response in our lives. In his 1861: THE CIVIL WAR AWAKENING, Adam Goodheart recounts the unease because “the telegraph made it easier for the shrillest ideologue to find an audience.”(p. 45) In a discussion last week, one lamented the increase of violence in our time. Another responded, no, it just gets filmed and reported more now. ‘Book brain arc’:1861…2016.
I’ve read how the early years of Social Security implementation were as hotly contested as Affordable Health Care. Recent reading on the 1960’s recounted the violence in cities then and near national split between white and black. For sure, we have come a long way, but racism still roils us. Edgy aging white guys like me have a tough time getting what ‘black lives matter’ means and how ‘white privilege’ has benefitted us, even though we have worked hard.
Here’s the face book bridge. Books help show us faces and life stories around the world and through history we could never see on our own. Methodist founder John Wesley affirmed he was ‘homo liber uni’ – a man of One Book – yet he read and wrote countless books and tracts to understand that book’s life applications. The more we know about the thens, the better we can respond…not react now. Getting historical doesn’t take us back but helps us go forward without getting hysterical.
Books help us be better stewards of the fast information of social media. So many faces, so many books, so little time. We do not, not have time to read books.