Archive for April, 2011

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7 Years of Moments

Monday, April 25th, 2011

First Post - April 2005 - Share on OviThere was just a small mention on Twitter some days ago. I honestly don’t know how to make this seem like a bigger moment. In some ways, its not. MMM has been very plain and simple from day one. And here, at year number 7, I’m looking back wondering if I’ve done well with the Master’s investment. To be honest, I’m not sure that I have.

That’s not to say that there hasn’t been moments. Creating a platform for “Chrsit in mobile” is intriguing enough to garner a small audience. That was not the focus of this initiative. Those who have supported and pushed because they agreed with the line of questioning have made it possible to get this far. And as far as I know, there are few people still arond from those early days. Psychologically, I’m grateful for people like LaRosa and Sammy – they’ve really been in my corner from the beginning, and I’d given up a number of times if it wasn’t for ears or surprise words from them.

Its been hard, I can tell you that much. What were you doing with mobile and ministry 7 years ago? Exactly. And its not like it didn’t make sense to some. But, it didn’t. And I didn’t fight hard enough to make it make sense. I was honestly just trying to get an answer for myself…

…and stay mindful of the door of escape that God provided for me too many times.

There have been moments. Moments where I was literally steps from giving this up because there was no comments for months on end. No contributions from people who said they would. Because I was tired, and I needed to make a living, not put time and energy into something that I could honestly say – it would be impossible for me to know the extent of its effect… mobile ministry is and always will be bigger than me.

And, man, there have been smiles and tears. That series by Pat, the rescued message from the spam folder that became the BBC interview, the requests to speak to classes and people who were/are well ahead of me professionally and vocationally. I can’t even try to playback all of that, and yet its in here – in every post, every tweet, every started (and failed) initiative. For seven years, this site, this “ministry” has been an anchor like no other for me. For mobile, I’m not really sure. There are moments, but I still don’t know that its understood.

Can you tell I’m a bit tired. I don’t know how you married folks do it. I’ve been wedded to MMM, and can’t see myself without it and can’t stand it all at the same time. I’ve seen other sites come and go. I’ve seen other ministry sites come and go – and each one that left took some life out of me. This site, for better and worse, has stood. I’m so grateful for Damond and Lance for the servers.

I imagine that everyone gets to this point. That moment in their life where they make a genuine assessment of whether it was worth it, whether it matters to keep going or not. I’m there often – definitley more often since trying to do this full-time. I can see the implications of not doing this so clearly, and the areas of my life that have suffered becasue I’ve been so adamant about keeping to this land I’ve been given. For seven years… over 2300 posts. That’s a lot of tilling.

I truly hope that MMM, in all of its tweaks, character flaws, initiatives started/failed/started-again has been able to alert you to the reality of mobile, and a Christian perspective on an opportunity to meet people where computer technology (more than ever) intersects with their life. That intersection can be simply accountability for a single parent whose in school, or for a religious leader who needs to know that the pulpit isn’t a sheid for his frailties. We’ve got to meet people where they are, bring the church/Body of Christ to them and minister justice, mercy, and grace. We can’t be ignorant of the abilities and responsibilities of this tech, nor should we elevate it to be bigger than it is.

I didn’t plan on going this far with MMM. I just wanted to know what the Body is doing with faith and mobile technology. Seven years later I’m still looking, still asking questions, still throwing things against the wall, hoping that something makes sense, something moves us towards serving Christ and one another.

Sending and receiving Christ in mobile. That’s where we stand 7 years in. From this point, maybe it sounds less like ‘a’ voice, and more like ‘the voice of an entire generation.’

 

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Good Friday, Narrated Through a Mobile Lens

Friday, April 22nd, 2011

Person using Camera Jiten via Imprint TalkAs surprised as I was when the news hit my mobile, there was still a lump in my throat. After the arrest, I knew that it would be a matter of time before they’d come looking for the rest of us. Thankfully, with the Passover in full swing, and the numbers in the city swelling, I could hide in a few places, and hopefully get the benefit of time causing some measure of forgetfulness. I only hope that the images we sent to the brothers weren’t intercepted.

The plans were in my head already, but here I needed to act. I told my wife of the situation for as much as I had known. Then asked her to take my mobile and destroy it. I’d keep the SIM card, and would be very brief and random when I’d use it to let her know where I am. I pulled the emergency mobile from the drawer, kissed her and the kids, then left under the cover of the rising sun. I was still excited about last night, and here I’m already running for my life.

Making my way through some of the early crowd, I made sure to keep the SIM in one pocket and the new(ish) mobile in the other. If at any point there was another announcement made about registering mobiles, I was fine with the mobile being taken or destroyed. Not the SIM, I needed that until I could get to one of the brothers and have it duplicated. Time was of the essence, I’d already been tipped off that one of the brothers was seen near where they held him for the night. Not sure if that image was posted, but it sure did make the rounds through a few text social circles.

By this point, I’d not eaten in nearly half a day. The news was now everywhere you could turn. Weirdly enough, there was very little about the officials looking for his associates. They seemed to be more concerned with him, the multiple trials, and later the show of blatant disregard for his lineage. In some of the video coverage, I could see mobiles being used to record, then Roman soldiers as well as religous officials snatching the devices out of the hands of people. They didn’t want this to get out, but they wanted it to be seen. This can’t end well.

Finally making it to the safe house, I pop my duped SIM into the emergency mobile and shoot some MMS messages to my wife and kids. I wanted them to see that I was ok. Hopefully, their devices aren’t being traced, but I have little time to care. I just need them to know that I’m ok. And then, almost like a symphony, all of us in the room hear all of our mobiles go off at the same time – all of us received the same MMS message. Was it them? Did they know where we were at after all? No one dared to even open the message, let along click off the prompt that a message was received. One of the guys who ran out of the house when the messages initially came in reentered the room saying that everyone has received the message. “Open it, look what they are doing to him!”

It was only a 30 second clip. But that was all that we needed to see. There he was, I think. In the face it looked like him, but the body was badily bruised. He had something on his head, but I couldn’t tell – I’ve got a simple mobile without a good screen. It looked like he nearly fell with some beam on his back, but then some other guy grabs the beam from him and then the scene cuts. We all looked at one another terrified. We knew what was next. This kind of message only comes out for certain kinds of capital punishments.

My mobile had been off for a few hours. I needed to relocate and didn’t need any cell towers tracking my movements. Better that my IMEI simply shows up in a different region with a different SIM than traveling across regions. It was around noon when mine and all the mobile around me beeped again. There was another MMS. This one felt different. The sky had darkened before it came in. I had this feeling in my stomach that I lost something very important.

I clicked to look at the message. There he was. Just… hanging there. The recording wasn’t clear, but he said something (John 19:30, Luke 23:46). Then he just hung his head. It was over. Right before this clip cut, a Roman soldier entered the scene. He didn’t look so strong, he looked convinced (Luke 23:47-49) - as I did that day on the Sea of Galilee – he wasn’t a normal man at all. Jesus was a lot more than that. But here, as plain as every recorded message of his that I had and had received from others, is gone.

People who’ve attended those crucifixions say that its different when you are there. I knew Jesus personally. I don’t think that I could have been there at all. The pain would have been too great, I’d try and pull him down or… something. I can’t think about that now. I shoot a message out to the brothers and some of the sisters, we need to figure out what’s next. Surely, in a few days when the Passover is done, we’ll be targeted. We’ve got to have a plan. That’s what he would have wanted, right?

Part two, what happens on Easter Sunday, continues the story.

 

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A Different Singular Focus

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

Poet in Color - Share on OviOne cannot be so naieve to think that technology will not get to a point that it will out perform aspects of life that we take for granted as being the sole domain of the human experience. And one cannot be so naieve to think also that we will always be able to control the implications of the decisions that we make with technological advances – such that surprise will always force the hand of ingenuity and experience that seems to sit as the domain of creativity and purpose that God’s given each of us for our lives.

It is with those thoughts that I think about the piece of Pope Benedict XVI’s sermon on Palm Sunday which was quoted by the Ottawa Citizen:

All the inventions of the human spirit are ultimately an effort to gain wings so as to rise to the heights of Being and to become independent, completely free, as God is free. Mankind has managed to accomplish so many things: we can fly! We can see, hear and speak to one another from the farthest ends of the earth. And yet the force of gravity which draws us down is powerful. With the increase of our abilities there has been an increase not only of good. Our possibilities for evil have increased and appear like menacing storms above history. Our limitations have also remained: we need but think of the disasters which have caused so much suffering for humanity in recent months.

What is somewhat unfortunate, is that the context of the quote pulls out of perspective some of what I think is many times lost in the magic of our technoloical times – that we are increasingly capable of creating some great things, being surprised by the most simple things, and in outright fear of what we don’t understand. And yet its at this intersection that we find many aspects of our lives challenged, disrupted, and bolstered by what has happened in such a short time.

We’ve gone from a few thousand mobiles in a lab and by a few wealthy elite to almost 2/3 of the world covered by mobile phones. We have more computing power in our hands with these devices than was used to send the first men to the moon. We can talk to one another instantly, almost making the entire world as close as a next-door neighbor. And indeed, these kinds of effects have also caused for the land to be stripped of its nutrients for farming, people to be exploited so that we can get to those choice materials faster and cheaper, and find several industries (many of which aren’t over 100 years old) falling aside to the personalization, speed, and raw ability to “just be there” of the Internet and these mobile windows. Surely, there are implications both perceived and missed when we take an honest look at just what is in our midst right now.

The question of how man can attain the heights, becoming completely himself and completely like God, has always engaged mankind. It was passionately disputed by the Platonic philosophers of the third and fourth centuries. For them, the central issue was finding the means of purification which could free man from the heavy load weighing him down and thus enable him to ascend to the heights of his true being, to the heights of divinity.

Is it true that we want to ascend to some level of God-hood with this technology. If you were to ask the most basic levels of users for different hardware or software, you might be surprised. That’s not what they want at all. They see a tool that seems as if it will solve their problem and they go for it. To them, they have little mind to think of the implications (long-term) or even how that tool was created that might cause an issue for them later.

And there are those who know a bit better. We know how to put things together (code or hardware). We understand the wizard behind the Oz and go along with it because it does fulfill some level of ego-posturing, self-worth to us. But we don’t stay there because we want to be gods either. However we come closeest to our basic tools brethren in understanding the slippery slope between it being a tool and an altar.

Finally, there are those who make decisions. In Ephesians 6, Paul makes the statement that could be unpacked here. There are those in authority in venues above us, who see what we don’t, make decisions that we can’t image, and are driven by things they can’t imagine. As often noted in the Scriptures – the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord and He turns it whatsoever way He desires. Those are the persons whose ego manifests itself in the products development, but not always in its direction. These are the folks most burdened by being surprised. And have the most to gain by not being surprised. And yet, they too are loaded with this weight of becoming the altar or crafting the tool.

It would seem that we are always engaged in trying to reach for something unattainable. And yet, there has been no time like the present that has shown us that even our imaginations aren’t too far from reality. I’m reminded of a man who has lived in computing since the 50s, and how the iPad is magical and dream-defeating in a sense to him. When we can go this far, there’s a fear that we might go too far. Or worse, that our creations for this life would spiral out of our control. And given that we aren’t much deposed to mercy it seems, that doesn’t bode well for any relationship betewen us and technology.

I personally don’t put much stock into the fear. As Pope Benedict XVI so duly noted at the end of that message:

We are on pilgrimage with the Lord to the heights. We are striving for pure hearts and clean hands, we are seeking truth, we are seeking the face of God. Let us show the Lord that we desire to be righteous, and let us ask him: Draw us upwards! Make us pure! Grant that the words which we sang in the processional psalm may also hold true for us; grant that we may be part of the generation which seeks God, “which seeks your face, O God of Jacob” (cf. Ps 24:6).

If this is our focus, not just with tech, but with life. We’ve got nothing to do but continue to grow responsibily with these tools, and the moments that its afforded us. If we forget this focus, then we’ll be consumed in our vanity. And it will not be technology that is our end, but our own hands which cause us to miss His high calling through Christ Jesus.

Quotes from Pope Benedict XVI’s Palm Sunday message pulled from Catholid Online

 

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