InstaGod

It's forever implanted in my brain and probably your brain too. The mystical all powerful sound of dial-up Internet.

RRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWKKKKKAAAAAAAAAAAHIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSS
MMMMEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWKKKKKKKKKKKKKSSSSSSHHHHSSSSS


The true power of the Internet alluded me at the tender age of thirteen which is when my family purchased our first ever land yacht, er, i mean, desktop computer. It weighed roughly 600 lbs. The giant cream colored monster sat just outside my bedroom on our upstairs landing giving me an easy entrance into a world of magic. See, when the Internet entered my life I wasn't thinking about access to information....I was thinking about access to BOYS.

Internet chatting is an awkward chubby frizzy-haired theatre obsessed girl's dream come true. In this land of only words I was a fucking goddess. Where else could a girl like me date the star quarterback of the local football team? I totally had Internet boyfriends and delighted in coming up with phrases that would make them fall deeper and deeper in love with me. Men (or people who were pretending to be men) would send me pictures and Internet flowers (remember those?) and e-cards. AOL chat rooms with various sexual themes were a favorite pastime for me and my best friends. We would gather around the computer screen and entice people to say dirty things to us so we could giggle endlessly. I remember once a man asked me, "Are you wet?" and I responded very seductively, "Oh, yeah, baby. I just got out of the shower." The innocence of my thirteen year old self warms my heart.

By fourteen I had traded in my Internet boyfriends for a real live boy. In-person relationships were much harder to manipulate and maintain but infinitely more satisfying. There are certain things you can't do online...like hold hands or make-out in the stairways before class. And holding hands and making out in stairways with your teenage love are such magical experiences!


(Why did I write all that about the internet? Will I reference that experience later in the blog? Will it all tie in somehow? Was there any reason at all for telling you that story? We'll see...)



Flash forward a few years to a much more confident nearly thirty-one year old cat lady in a frantic search for an air pump with a tire pressure gauge. That's where my Sunday began.


I am a mostly responsible adult. I am not however, a grown up. A mostly responsibly adult maintains a job, has decent credit, brushes teeth regularly, sees a doctor at least once a year and a dentist every four years and immediately airs up tires when the little symbol on her Honda Civic indicates the tire pressure is low. A GROWN UP sees a dentist for cleanings every six months, cares about stock exchange things, is always on time, has a savings account and owns a goddamn tire pressure gauge.


Once again I am not a grown up.


So dressed in the long skirt and headdress required to attend a Sikh temple I drove from gas station to gas station looking for an air pump with a pressure gauge cursing and screaming at my dumb mostly responsible self for not buying a four dollar gauge the last time this happened. The Sikh temple was about thirty-five minutes away from STL and I refused to drive on the highway with low tire pressure, it's not safe and mostly responsible adults care about safety. So, I was running late.

Finally I located the ONLY air pump in the entire city of St. Louis that has an ever so useful tire pressure gauge and aired up my tires. The whole experience made me rather irritable so I decided a chai tea latte was in order. The Sikh service lasted two hours and fifteen minutes and I was quite certain I wouldn't be able to make it through without Starbuck's assistance. So I traveled to the county and got in line at THE SLOWEST STARBUCKS ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

Most of the Starbucks I have visited over the years understand that when patrons enter their store they are usually in a hurry and caffeine deprived and thusly quickly whip out tall white cups of crack juice. Not in Ladue, MO though. With only fifteen minutes to drive thirty minutes away I was rather impatient. The lady took what felt like hours to write my name on the cup. Is she using a calligraphy pen? Is she embossing my name on that cup? I don't care what you write just FILL MY CUP WITH CHAI!!!!!!!  Of course I said none of this and just quietly stewed waiting out the three hours (ten minutes) it took to make my drink. There was no way I was going to make it to church this Sunday. Nope. Not going to happen.

So...I went to Target and bought a tire pressure gauge. Guess who's growing up?

I thought perhaps I'd find an evening service, but quickly the day got away from me as I was busy organizing/redecorating Rebecca's attic/craft room/bedroom. I didn't want to miss two church services in a row and I knew a weekday service would be hard to manage. I found myself thinking:

Man. I wish church could just come to me. Kinda like you call a cab. Can I just phone in a quick church service and have it delivered like pizza? Maybe even pick what kind of meaningful message I want for the day and enjoy it in my crappy clothes while drinking wine? WHY DOESN'T SUCH A THING EXIST??!?!?!?!



But of course. Silly me. It does. It's called.....THE INTERNETS.

Online church is great cause your cats can watch too!

Church online. It's the wave of the future. It's even better than church on TV. You can download previous services based on what kind of sermon you want to hear or interact with a live broadcast. You can sample from various religions - although most of the online services I came across were Christian. You can visit a church in Idaho or London with just the click of a button.

So, with my borrowed laptop in hand I set out to find an interesting online service to visit. This was not an easy task. Partly because online church services are ridiculously boring and also because I had an allergic reaction to a bug bite and my throat started to close up and my lips swelled and I broke into burning hot hives. So, I paused the service I was watching about the supremacy of Christ in a post-modern world to take some Benadryl and recover.

Check out my sweet hives. Ouch! (this is post Benadryl)

 

I then proceeded to delve into the world of online church services visiting the following places:

1. A YouTube video entitled "Jesus Christ is Great and Over Atheism" by Tim Keller - the most boring thing I've ever listened to/watched in my entire life
2. A podcast of an Episcopalian Church in Scotland - pretty standard church service with a different accent. www.kemnaykirk.org
3. A Shabbat service that was mostly just one guy talking about stuff and wasn't at all interesting - check out PunkTorah.
4. A live broadcast from a church in New Jersey called Liquid Church (standard contemporary Christian worship stuff) there I got to interact with people via a live chat where we said exciting insightful things like "hi" and "where are you from?"


Many Christian churches now have a live webcast or recorded sermons for your viewing pleasure. With the help of modern technology you can experience the magic of hipsters playing guitars and singing corny praise music anywhere you go. No need to dress up. No need to leave your house. No need to talk with other people. Hell, just grab your smart phone, click the link and you can poop while praising the Lord.

Convenient, eh?

I spent nearly two hours visiting churches online and the whole experience left me....underwhelmed.

We no yike you Internet church.

 

Sure, I enjoyed viewing services while hanging out in my grubby clothes chilling in bed with the cutest but loudest two year old on the planet along with a bottle of wine and six cats. That was lovely. It was cool to be able to "experience" services in places I either have no desire to go to (New Jersey) or am unable to go to (Scotland). I could see how this could be a great resource for parents with loud children who cannot sit still during a church service under any circumstances (Margot Carroll) or people who are unable to leave their homes due to illness or mobility.

 

It's just....I didn't get a whole lot out of it. It was about as fulfilling as an Internet boyfriend. So much of church is the people and the noise and the nuisances and the interruptions and the mood in the room and the feeling you get when there are enough people in the congregation who can harmonize beautifully to Amazing Grace and the applause or the silence and the handshake or (ahhh!) hug from a stranger. These things cannot be replicated on the Internet and church just isn't the same without them. You can't snuggle an Internet boyfriend just like you can't shake the hand of your live broadcast chat friends.

 

Plus, I enjoy and prefer having religious experiences outside of my home. Just like I prefer to work-out at a gym and see movies in a movie theatre. There's something special about leaving your regular day-to-day life where you manage all kinds of things and going some place special where you focus all your attention on just one thing. The gym is where I go to focus on fitness (and socialize). The movie theatre is where I go to focus on films (and socialize). Lately, church is where I go to have time with and reflect on God (and socialize). Though, I firmly believe you don't need to attend church to have a relationship with the spiritual. A connection with the spiritual can be established anytime and anywhere. But, these past months I've come to really appreciate having a special place and time reserved for spiritual reflection. This week I think I would have done better sitting under a tree in the park rather than "attending" online services. But, you live and you learn and you buy a tire pressure gauge.

 

 

 

We'll see what next week brings...