January 29, 2017

Far

Face-to-Face

My husband works in Seattle even though we live in Santa Barbara. So, every now and then, since homeschooling and our eleven-year-old are very portable, we move the whole shebang 1000 miles north.

I've made it a habit when we travel to try to connect with folks that I have gotten to know online. Maybe I'll make a point to meet with a work colleague who helped produce a book with me, or someone who has championed my stories over the years, or perhaps I'll meet with someone who shares in one of my loves (reading, writing, gardening, baking, kids, etc...). These face-to-face meetings--even if they're just an hour at a coffee shop--change things. Suddenly, someone who used to be a profile picture is a living, laughing, scarf-wearing human. Sometimes when these meetings happen, I'll look at them and almost see a tether between the two of us--a thread that is joined by time, and space, and beating hearts. Suddenly we are not just words. We are wrinkles (or not!), and we are warm, and we sip our coffee, and we are so completely three dimensional, and we are NOW, and we are communion. We are not just "friends." We were already a part of the whole--a part of being sick and well, a part of being old and new--but when we are side by side we are actually in communion, breaking bread together, drinking, sharing words...

I was thinking today, imagining in the (near) future, a time when most work and learning will be online. A time when Amazon delivery people will be threading through our streets like little ants. A time when therapists will have a mental health pyramid. We will need just enough face-to-face interaction in our lives to keep us mentally stable, and if we get that, then the other hours of cruising Facebook, of watching riveting television series, of posting pictures on our Instagram pages might be (somewhat, grudgingly,) allowed. But if we have too little of that real life human awareness and contact, then our eyesight will diminish, our mental capacity will waiver, and our concept of reality will fade into pixel dust...

I'm an introvert, so I really could live inside a turret and drink tea and watch movies and write books all day long. Thank God, though, that I'm old enough to have learned. Real people are amazing! They are living, walking, images of God Himself! They are complete, unique, amazing creations, and I'm glad I know a few of them. I'm hoping to know more. In this time of bizarre divisiveness, and political and personal unrest, I recommend that you travel to the next county over and meet someone new. Someone that you thought you knew, but until you see them up close, you realize that you only knew the middle paragraph on the fourtieth page of the entire book.