Crossing Borders: Connection Stories

It has been just over a week since our St. Mary’s Parish School family learned of the Diocese of Joliet’s plan to close our school.

In that time, we have experienced a dizzying and contradictory  array of emotions,  including  sadness, frustration, anger, disappointment, and confusion, but also including stirrings toward a desire for truth,  peace,  understanding, and a brighter future.

Because Catholic Schooling is a mission and a ministry, it is always something more than a matter of intellectual education, and we are seeing that in our varying and sometimes mercurial responses to our situation.  Our students study all of the usual school subjects, but they are also continuously encouraged in their faith formation, a focus woven throughout the curriculum, and the foundation upon which all our efforts are built.  The connection between Catholic Schooling and the Catholic Church–between learning and faith–is strong and inspiring.  Together and individually, many  St. Mary’s parishioners and school families face the challenge of forging new connections,  and even finding new homes.

Here at St. Mary’s Matters, we tend to pay fairly close attention to the Holy Father’s prayer intentions each month.  It just so happens that in January of 2010, the Pope’s general prayer intention was as follows:

That young people may learn to use modern means of social communication for their personal growth and to better prepare themselves to serve society.

Alas, I can no longer be considered young by any standard.  Still, I see a real connection between this prayer intention and the online relationships that the Friends of St. Mary’s have forged over the last few weeks.

Crisis and tragedy often bring out the best in people.  When help is needed, the borders that sometimes divide us miraculously dissolve.  Differences in age, ethnicity, economic status, gender, and politics fade before the need at hand.  Many rightfully approach social networking tools guardedly, knowing that they cannot replace the warmth of face-to-face interaction, and must be used wisely and with due caution.  The Pope is clearly correct, though:  we can use these tools to grow and to serve one another.

Both here on the St. Mary’s Matters blog and on the Friends of St. Mary’s Facebook page, we can see the positive power of social networking in action. St. Mary’s parents support and encourage one another, sharing  information about new schools, and positive visions for the future.  Alumni reconnect and celebrate their common history.  Families from other schools offer condolences and warm welcomes.  Parishioners reach out in empathy.  Offers of help and hope are exchanged.  Uplifting prayers are offered.  Geographical boundaries disappear.

When we began this journey, I couldn’t have guessed that some of the most uplifting messages I would hear would come from a St. Mary’s alumna now living in Argentina, but still very much inspired by her love for the school and the church.

Writing is at the heart of social networking.  In posts of meandering length or telegraphic brevity, we share information, we express emotion, we lean on faith, we grope towards truth, we seek purpose . We connect.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.

Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,

And human love will be seen at its height.

Live in fragments no longer.

Only connect…

–E.M. Forster, Howards End

Connection matters.

Those who fear social networking might accuse me of putting too pretty a face on things.  There was anger there, too, they might point out.  There was outrage, even.  There was plenty of venting, and there will undoubtedly be more.

I can only concede.  Yes, connection is not always lovely or admirable in its particulars.  Nonetheless, it is important that we write together toward wholeness.

During my years as a college writing professor, I used to share the following excerpt from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird with my students:

Then I look into my students’ faces, and they look solemnly back at me.

“So why does our writing matter, again?” they ask.

Because of the spirit, I say.  Because of the heart.  Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation.  They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life:  they feed the soul.  When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored.  We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least at clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.  It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea.  You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.

–Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird:  Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

Writing and social networking are about business, silliness, scholarship, entertainment, and sometimes less than savory undertakings, but at their best they are always about crossing borders–forging connections that have the power to transform the world, little by little.

It is a fine thing to consider that January social networking prayer intention and to realize that even though youth is far too fleeting, one is never really too old to use the “modern means of social communication” to grow, and to participate–in howsoever humble a fashion–in the process of shaping a better world.