Swept Away

Aye, I have given myself up to the o'erwhelming tide and joined Facebook.

I held out until this past Thursday, when, at the board meeting of a group I'm up to my neck in, it was confirmed that our electronic newsletter was going to be abolished in favor of our group's Facebook presence.

The printed newsletter will still come out, but that's quarterly, only.

So I signed up on Friday, and blew a lot of yesterday and much of today adding my real-world friends as Facebook friends.

And doing up my profile, photos, and so on and so forth.

I'd been reluctant to join, because there you are, exposed for the world to see. I mean, what if I said or posted something awkward and a pastoral search committee saw it?

But I suppose the question answers itself. It'd be easy, sitting alone at my computer in the serene privacy of my study, to think whatever I post on Facebook (or my blogs, for that matter), is a private communication.

Not hardly. Facebook is not my diary, a phone call to a friend, or even a personal letter or email. What goes there is for all the world to see. And if I have to be careful and create a persona that I'm willing to submit for public inspection, so be it. We're not totally, wholly, marvellously, abysmally "ourselves" to anybody but God.