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Faithful Curators - Social Media & Noticing

During “The Age of Collaboration” Minns Lecture, I spoke of curating as one of the faithful spiritual practices for our digital age. Curating has two parts: the practice of noticing and sharing the good and weeding out the distracting and detrimental.

Every vibrant faith tradition has lively dialogue and people creating and sharing goodness in many ways. Thanks to inexpensive and free blogging tools and sites, more and more of that dialogue and goodness is shared via the blogs, and from there through other social media. As the number of blogs proliferate, curating is required. Why? We cannot read everything, and everything we read is not going to lead us into stronger spiritual practice or more active and engaged faithing.

One can be a connective faith leader by practicing good noticing what is worth noticing and sharing it, and helping us through the sea of ideas, stories, songs, service projects, and ethical actions to what we can implement, retell, sing, and join. No one faith leader will be the best curator for any one religion. And those who curate effectively are always noticing and sharing what other significant curators are noticing and sharing.

Good spiritual curation requires knowing one’s mission and gifts and what is likely to be helpful to one’s spiritual and faith communities.

Aggregators and blogrolls are tools for curation. UUpdates is one of the best tools for Unitarian Universalist faith curators, since it is a blog aggregator (blogs meeting particular guidelines can be registered and their feeds added), not a blogroll (an already curated list of blogs). Both blogrolls and aggregators are good things in our digital age, but I prefer aggregators because then I am introduced regularly to voices and issues that might not surface in my RSS reader (which is one way to have a personal blogroll, as opposed to a public list on your website).

Becoming a regular part of a network of curators (we all can curate!) is another important tool. There are few social media curation networks I can visit on a daily basis when I don’t find something worth sharing. Pinterest and Twitter are my favorite social media curation network homes. But others prefer Instagram, Tumblr, Kleek, YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook.

There is a lot of good being created and shared in the world, and noticing that goodness changes us. When I can slip into a social media network for a few minutes and meet a spiritual piece that challenges me to be better, a song that sustains me through difficulty, or an act of generosity and witness that calls me to join it, that abundance changes my perspective on the day. Hope is being made real in all kinds of places and ways. We have only to notice and share it, join it, and risk making it real ourselves.


Evening Prayer June 5 Heart of mine, when troubled, stop here longer in prayer. Listen to the song of the world, to the healing of the broken-hearted, to the bearers of hope rebuilding with the bereft, to the creators of compassion who know grief and know the ways of restoration. Heart of mine, rest here in the quiet for a while longer, held by the whole, until ready to try again, until hunger prods toward breaking bread and sharing that with someone else who may turn out to be in as much, if different, need. Heart of mine, can you feel the song of Love sings you into being in this moment? Turn into it, breathe, raise your heart in thanksgiving, and rejoin this dance of life with gratitude, with wonder, with not knowing what will come next. What comes next? An ‘Alleluia’, a steadying breath, the work and life that matters – let us be ready to live into the yes. Amen.
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Evening Prayer June 5

Heart of mine, when troubled, stop here longer in prayer. Listen to the song of the world, to the healing of the broken-hearted, to the bearers of hope rebuilding with the bereft, to the creators of compassion who know grief and know the ways of restoration. Heart of mine, rest here in the quiet for a while longer, held by the whole, until ready to try again, until hunger prods toward breaking bread and sharing that with someone else who may turn out to be in as much, if different, need. Heart of mine, can you feel the song of Love sings you into being in this moment? Turn into it, breathe, raise your heart in thanksgiving, and rejoin this dance of life with gratitude, with wonder, with not knowing what will come next. What comes next? An ‘Alleluia’, a steadying breath, the work and life that matters – let us be ready to live into the yes. Amen.

The Ragged Stocking – Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (Unitarian, suffragist, abolitionist, author, educator)

Do you see this ragged stocking,
Here a rent and there a hole?
Each thread of this little stocking
Is woven around my soul.

Do you wish to hear my story?
Excuse me, the tears will start,
For the sight of this ragged stocking
Stirs the fountains of my heart.

You say that my home is happy;
To me ‘tis earth’s fairest place.
Buts its sunshine, peace and gladness
Back to this stocking I trace.

I was once a wretched drunkard;
Ah! You start and say not so;
But the dreadful depths I’ve sounded,
And I speak of what I know.

I was wild and very reckless
When I stood on manhood’s brink,
And, joining with pleasure-seekers
Learned to revel and drink.

Strong drink is a raging demon,
In his hands are shame and woe;
He mocketh the strength of the mighty,
And bringeth strong men low.

The light of my was darkened
By the shadow of my sin;
And want and woe unbarr’d the door,
And suffering entered in.

The streets were full one Christmas Eve,
And alive with girls and boys,
Merrily looking through windowpanes
At bright and beautiful toys

And throngs of parents came to buy
The gifts that children prize,
And homeward trudged with happy hearts,
The love-light in their eyes.

I thought of my little Charley,
At home in his lowly bed,
With the shadows around his life,
And in shame I bowed my head.

I entered my home a sober man,
My heart by remorse was wrung,
And there in the chimney corner,
This little stocking was hung.

Faded and worn as you see it;
To me ‘tis a precious thing,
And I never gaze upon it
But unbidden tears will spring.

I begin to search my pockets,
But scarcely a dime was there;
But scanty as was the pittance,
This stocking received its share.

For a longing seized upon me
To gladden the heart of my boy,
And I bought him some cakes and candy,
And added a simple toy.

Then I knelt by this little stocking
And sobbed out an earnest prayer,
And arose with strength to wrestle
And break from the tempter’s snare.

And this faded, worn-out stocking,
So pitiful once to see,
Became the wedge that broke my chain,
And a blessing it brought to me.

Do you marvel then I prize it?
When each darn and seam and hole
Is liked with my soul’s deliverance
From the bondage of the bowl?

And tonight my wife will tell you,
Though I’ve houses, gold and land,
He holds no treasure more precious
Than this stocking in my hand.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a Unitarian, educator, author, African-American, suffragist, and abolitionist, wrote this poem for the cause of temperance and the call to sobriety. Maybe Mrs. Harper had heard, as I have, the big wish from the heart of love for a parent’s health and sobriety. This is a season of promises, a season of turning, a season of remembering love. Unlike Mrs. Harper I don’t think addiction is a blot upon the soul, but there is help and communities of caring people who share the struggle.  One of those communities is Alcoholics Anonymous: International General Services: http://www.aa.org/lang/en/aa_international.cfm?origpage=31  U.S. & Canada: http://www.aa.org/lang/en/central_offices.cfm?origpage=373 Broward County: (954)462-7202 or 954-462-0265 
When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens like one of those fluted Japanese blossoms, flimsy and spastic, bright and warm. This almost always seems to happen in community.
Annie Lamott quoted in The Impossible Will Take A Little While

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