"Status Updates" from God?

As I gaze at my Facebook homepage/newsfeed, I get a sense of déjà vu about “status updates.” So many of them are… uncalled for. Trivial. A waste of everyone’s eye time.

What do they remind me of? Oh, I know! They remind me of the some of the “messages” I hear from the other Friends when I attend Quaker meeting.

At my Meeting, Quakers sit down weekly for “unprogrammed” silent worship. No preacher. No liturgy. The point is that we are waiting. Silently waiting for God to make Himself known to us.

However, if you are led by the Spirit to say something, you can. But these messages are supposed to be things that absolutely must come out. Like, God told you to say it.

Yet you’ll hear a tearful message about a bumper sticker someone saw with the stars and bars (Confederate flag) and King’s “I have a dream” quote. You also get tearful narcissistic/solipsistic confessions about … excuse the little joke, but about God-knows-what.

Many messages reveal the overwhelmingly liberal orientation of the Meeting, in that they start with the person standing up and saying, “I was reading the New York Times this morning, and…” or “I was listening to NPR, and…” And then their “message from God” is just some banal story I could’ve gotten out of the New York Times myself.

(I secretly want to stand up sometime – I never have given a message, by the way – and say, “[Clears throat] I was listening to Rush Limbaugh, as I do every day, and…”)

My favorite message ever was about a “gory” photo shoot on America’s Next Top Model (ANTM). Some older Friend had stumbled upon the show, and wanted Friends to write to the WB (!) and ask them not to show these upsetting images anymore. Talk about my two worlds colliding! ANTM and RSOF (Religious Society of Friends=Quakers)!

Also, you’re not supposed to respond to a message directly. That’s a lucky thing for the messengers, because if I could respond they wouldn’t like what I have to say.

A big problem is that everyone is welcome at Quaker meeting. So you get all kinds of people that don’t understand what’s going on (“Why is it all quiet? I should’ve brought a book…”), plus lots of certifiably insane people. And I say that not because I have anything against insane people. I love insane people. But they do disrupt things pretty badly sometimes, and it pushes the limits of Quaker tolerance and forbearance.

I heard a story about how this known sex offender guy (child molester, I believe) started attending this one Meeting and everyone kind of was upset about it, but they felt like they couldn’t say anything, because, you know, “all are welcome,” right? But something intolerable happened (not sure what it was) and finally the clerk of the Meeting took the guy aside and said, “Perhaps you should try the Unitarian Universalists…”

So, in conclusion, I humbly offer this two-part reminder: Before typing your next status update on Facebook, ask yourself, “Would SM Shrake care about what I’m about to type?” And to my f/Friends at meeting for worship, before standing up and telling us about the high price of arugula at Whole Foods and what that says about the right sharing of world resources, ask thyself: “Did God tell me to say this? Or did the Devil tell me to say it in order to annoy Shrake?”

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

TAGS: facebook • Faith • humor • Quaker • Quaker Meetings • Religion