Okay, so let’s really talk about Second Life. It is fairly incredible and will only continue to grow, like virtual worlds, as the technology makes them all the more real. Apple’s “E-World” was before its time! From the beginning, I think virtual-worlds are morally neutral – just like the real-world. What we do and how we are within either world is where issues of morality and ethics and appropriateness come into play. What is the good, the beautiful, and what contributes to the banal or lesser instincts within us all no matter what world we inhabit?
Several years ago when I was at the beginning stages of postulency, I e-mailed my then bishop and said that I was playing with the idea of being a “cyber-priest.” He shot back an e-mail saying, basically, “I’m not sending you to seminary to play around in some cyber-world. The faith, because it is incarnational, can only be experienced in a tactile community. Community is impossible outside of the ‘real world.'”
Well, I thought, I’m not sure why I received such a rebuke, but it isn’t up to me or the good bishop to determine what is possible and what is not and what people consider “community” to be or where it can happen. It will be.
Fast forward and we all know that “community” happens in the ether. Second Life is the more recent expression of it. It is “real” and will only become more “real,” particularly for those who have a very difficult time in the “real-world.” It is often easier to create yourself in a virtual-world where others cannot see the “real” you, than it is to deal with the very difficult issues of “real life” so that you can be that very person you desire to be actually in real life.
What does this mean for people of faith? What does this mean for Christians? I know all too well it is all to easy to be the alter-ego of the real-life-self in the virtual-world were you make yourself out to be beautiful, when your are not, where you make yourself out to be svelte when you are actually 200 pounds overweight, where you are the life of the party when you are truly very shy, where you do the nasty like a perv because it isn’t “real.”
It is often easier to live in a fantasy than in reality. It is easier to make an avatar than to accept ourselves and learn to love ourselves as Christ loves us. It is easier to attempt to create a new “reality” then to confront the force of the “real-reality” that won’t let you be who you want to be or who you fantasize about being.
Second Life, and such virtual worlds, can be a lot of fun. It can be great to express ourselves in ways that we might be a little afraid to express ourselves in the real-world. People can learn in virtual-reality to be more “themselves” in the real-world.
The caution is, and we have to face this, that any of us can descend into falsehood, into lies, into psychosis because of it all – just like real life. We also have to face that as we give ourselves over to ways of behaving or thinking in the virtual-worlds, we are affected in the real-world. What we entertain even if in a virtual-world, it is still our minds in the real world that is doing or thinking the thing. Whatever we give ourselves over to and whatever we allow to influence us, well, even if only in the virtual-world it will affect us and will bleed from the virtual into the real.
What do we do with this? It certainly isn’t evil, but if we aren’t careful evil will be realized. As priests, as counselors, as Christians, how do we navigate the virtual?

From the July/August edition of The Atlantic, the Society column:
Generation Me

“Young people are generally full of themselves, but a new study suggests that today’s kids are far more self-centered than preceding generations. A team of five university psychologists analyzed the results of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a 40-question survey administered to 16,475 current and recent college students nationwide between 1982 and 2006; the test asked students to agree or disagree with statements like ‘I think I am a special person’ and ‘If I ruled the world, it would be a better place.’ The results, the authors argue, illustrate a steady increase in narcissism – a ‘positive and inflated view of the self.’ Overall, almost two-thirds of the most recent sample display a higher level of narcissism than the 1982 average.
Why the increase? The researchers speculate that technology may have something to do with it. Narcissism is especially acute among students born after 1982, the cohort most likely to use ‘self-focused’ Web sites like MySpace and YouTube.
Whatever the cause, the researchers argue that increased narcissism can have pernicious effects, on the individual and on society. They cite previous studies showing that narcissists have trouble forming meaningful relationships, tend to be materialistic, and are prone to higher levels of infidelity, substance abuse, and violence.”
(“Egos Inflated Over Time: A Test of Two Generational Theories of Narcissism Using Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis,” Jean M. Twenge et al.)

To be honest, from my experience, I think they are right.
The question for us: What do we do about it? For those of us who work in Christian formation, the whole idea of giving up oneself, loving others more than oneself, dying to self in order to have real life – all of it – will be even more profoundly counter-cultural. The whole notion of being content in all things, as Paul writes, will be impossible. When people have an “…inflated view of self,” there is little impact we can have, until the stark reality of life (their own life) brings them crashing down. But, then, will we be there to help them get over their bad self and begin truly living or will we be encouraging them in their spiritual dysfunction by acquiescing to the zeit-geist? The two acrimonious sides of the Church universal either deny reality or give themselves over to anything the culture lifts up as good. We must be wise to not fall into those traps.
It will no longer be a concern about how we might compete with the prevailing culture, which infuses so much of current religious-talk and strategizing, but how do we present the counter argument in a way that those who can hear will hear.
It will be by demonstration – living a life that is full of integrity, content, and not hypocritical – starkly different and not simply by words. This is the failing of the one side of the Church – there is little difference between them and have no consideration for God. There is so much difference between the other extreme in the Church and the experience of regular people that non-Christians cannot hear the Gospel through that side’s rhetoric and hypocrisy.
Can we be strong enough and wise enough to make plain that this Way of ours is not easy, is not broad in relation to the dysfunction of the culture, and is not like the world? If we cannot, then narcissism and like attitudes and conditions will reign, thus making “loving God with our whole self” and “loving our neighbors as we love ourselves” impossible, let alone truly and utterly loving our enemies. (Well, because the “its all about me” will be so absolute, we will have far more enemies individually and socially. We will end up being very isolated and lonely people.)
Now, can we talk about Second Life?

An interesting interview with one of the authors of a new study on higher education’s role in the “secularization” of young people, or its lack there of.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/augustweb-only/133-42.0.html

I saw the latest Harry Potter movie this past week. I see in Harry as he moves into his teen years this frustration and loneliness – “you don’t understand! I can’t take this anymore!” – that alludes kids who don’t know yet that there could be something different. He is growing up. We watch and wait in anticipation of the process and the journey.
I missed the cultural excitement of a generation of readers who had to WAIT, sometimes years, for the next installment of the story. What would happen next? For the kids reading the books, who happened to be around same age as the characters, they see the images of themselves and what they have to go through in life. They relate, even if but a little, to the trials and tribulations, the friendships and the loves, that the characters must endure – for good and for bad. (And, the bad is never glossed over – it can’t be avoided!)
Such excitement. Such anticipation. Wait. Wait, and don’t tell me about it before hand because I want to experience the discovery myself!
I just read an article about the Harry Potter phenomena and some parallels (or anti-parallels) with the Christian faith and the culture. Interesting points. Here is an excerpt:

Those of us who have been reading the Harry Potter novels as they were being published were able to experience something special that future generations of readers won’t — the anticipation and suspense of waiting several years between each book. From now on, new readers can read all seven books straight through if they want to. But for the past decade, Harry Potter readers have been part of a global community that has experienced the dramatic tension of waiting for the next installment.
I wonder what it would look like for the gospel story to be more suspenseful. I think one of the most significant aspects about the experience of reading the final Harry Potter book is that we didn’t want to hear spoilers. We had come to know and love the characters so much that we wanted to journey with Harry and his friends. We needed to experience and discover for ourselves what they were going through. We didn’t want to find out in chapter two of book one how it was all going to turn out. Instead, we read seven books and thousands of pages, staying up into the wee hours of the morning, because the journey is every bit as important as the ending. Indeed, without experiencing the adventure of the journey, there wouldn’t have been as much dynamic power to the ending.
Are Christian “gospel presentations” less like the adventure of a Harry Potter novel and more like spoilers that tell you what happened but take all the suspense and delight out of the journey? Maybe Christians have been so intent on getting to the point and bottom-lining things, for the sake of saving souls, that they’ve taken the mystery and surprise out of the narrative. We jump to the end. God loves you, Jesus died for you, pray this prayer, yada yada yada.
It’s well-intentioned but self-defeating. We don’t get to know the characters, so we diminish the experience and the power of the biblical narrative. Often we are so concerned about getting people from here to there that they don’t experience the journey enough to really make the faith their own. We have short-circuited the narrative imagination. What a loss.

I couldn’t agree more. What have we done in the name of religion – or power, or prestige, or insecurity, or fear, or…
This thing called Christianity, this faith, this way of life, this way of being and thinking, is a journey that necessitates personal discovery. It cannot simply be told to us or demanded of us with the expectation of honest and real understanding – the kind that satisfies our inner-most being. Most of all, it takes a whole heck of a lot of waiting, anticipation, and more waiting – and work. This is how it is, no matter how we want it to be. Rawlings was not going to write any faster, no matter how much her fans demanded it. “Make me whole, right NOW!” “Solve all my problems, right NOW.” “Make me feel good, right NOW.” “Make me a millionaire, right NOW!” “Make me popular, self-assured, healed, powerful, funny, straight, ruler of all things, NOW!”
Christianity doesn’t work this way. It just doesn’t, and because the form of the faith that is now in the ascendancy says that it can, we all experience a very deficient faith. And you know what? Most people realize it and have said, “We don’t want anything to do with you all and this Christianity of yours’.” They see the superficiality, the hypocrisy, and the self-deception that runs rampant within American Christianity. It is empty, it is bland, it is irrelevant to the deep calling to the deep. I’m telling ya, the monastics have it right (or as right as possible this side of the divide), even though we cannot all be professed monastics. What then can we be?

I’ve been leading (stumbling through) the first stages of the discernment process for “Journey 2 Adulthood” with our “Discernment” and “Prayer” committees. Right now, we really don’t have much of a “youth group.”
I was reading an article not too long ago (I don’t have the reference?) by an Evangelical on this phenomena of American youth-groups. Basically, the author stressed that it has only been since around the 1950’s that this method of youth ministry sprung up. Before that, faith formation of young people happened primarily in the home, and the Church was there to help the parents. He also said that with today’s young people, perhaps we need to examine our current methods (he is writing primarily about Evangelical youth ministry, remember) and re-examine that was it was done for most of the history of the Christian Church. Consider a recent “study” that was done that suggested that only 4% of current Evangelical teenagers will pro-actively continue on in their faith after leaving home.
Our J2A discernment committee is taking a break over the summer, as does most everything during the summer months in New York City. As I continue to pray and think about our young people, the young people of this City, and what our physical plant suggests about how St. Paul’s viewed ministry to young people in its past.
St. Paul’s Church, as an Anglo-Catholic institution of The Episcopal Church, was not built for a modern-day “Sunday School” program or a current-day American youth group. There originally was no space provided for “Sunday School” classes whether for children or adults. Much of Christian formation was done through working in the Guilds of the Church and simply being together.
Within the Anglican-Catholic expression of the faith, it is expected that the people are engaged in their own spiritual growth at home, on the job, and in the parish. They give to God what is God’s, they love God with their entire being, and they love their neighbor as themselves – to varying degrees of success and failure of course. Sunday mornings are for the Mass – the celebration and receiving of the Eucharist, the hearing of the Word, and the prayers. The parish is also responsible for providing Daily Offices for integrative interaction of Scripture and prayer. The parish conducts instruction for a variety of things, but in ways different than what we may expect or envision today.
So, what does youth ministry for an urban, Anglo-Catholic parish look like? Young people are terribly busy and scheduled with all manner of other activities, as are their parent(s). So far, the traditional American understanding of youth ministry has fallen flat, and there are various other reasons for this other than busyness. But, what do we do now? What is the need, now? How do we best engage young people and be about their formation as pro-active, life-long, and faithful believers?
I am beginning to think it is not through “traditional” notions of “youth ministry.” J2A is a great program and perhaps the best I’ve seen. It is not really designed for urban youth ministry, however. We can adapt it, but is there something different we should be doing? I have no desire to remake the wheel, but I just don’t think that the “normal” means will work around this place at this time.
Has there be a fundamental shift in how we need to deal with our young people – with this generation? I don’t know, but I sense we are in the midst of such a shift.