Fictive Family

I just watched a sweet film starting the marvelous Joan Plowright entitled Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. It is about an elderly woman who moves to London where her grandson also lives. She encounters a young man, a writer, and they become friends. The other residents think he is her grandson and since her own grandson never visits she allows the misunderstanding to continue. It is really about the way in which fictive family, that is family that is established by the participants rather than by birth, adoption, or marriage, can be much more profound than the family we have from circumstance. As someone with a large fictive family I quite delighted in the film.

Internet friendships

Peter Leclaire, vp academic.
Our final lecture in the friendship series took place last night and it was a big success. Peter Leclaire, the VP Academic, came from the college to introduce Marko Hilgersom who is a very popular teacher at the college. He's receiving a NISOD Excellence in Learning Leadership Award this spring (I think learning leadership is some new way of saying 'teaching'). He teaches all sorts of culture/film/religion courses at the college and is developing a new course on narrative. And he's my neighbour.

Marko brought clickers along to allow him to poll the audience (about 50 people ranging in age from 15-70+) which was a lot of fun. For the first half of his talk he mostly polled us about our attitudes towards friendship, how many friends we had, what qualities we most valued in friendship... Then he introduced Aristotle's categories of friendship and related what we had identified to those. And then he talked about the qualities of friendships mediated solely by the internet and asked the question of whether these really counted as friendships. His answer was a qualified yes. He suggested the same qualities can be present in these relationships but they are easier to fake. And he suggested that ultimately true friendship required face to face meeting although we debated that in the discussion afterwards. My counter example was the friendship between Helen and Frank that is described in the book 84 Charing Cross Road - a true story of two people who become significant friends through letters but never meet.

It was a great evening and a really good way to end our series. Now we look forward to the fall when we will do another mini series, this one of religion and fiction.

Friendship with people with differing abilities

Bruce MacKay spoke last night on friendship with people with disabilities. He outlined different approaches to defining disability and pointed out that views of disabilty dominant until recently, views which led often to institutionalization of people with disabilities, made friendship difficult.

As an alternative Bruce talked about differing abilities and suggested that we benefit from friendships with people different than ourselves. In part this is based on the realization that we are all mortal and vulnerable to disability ourselves. We are all 'TAB's, temporarily able bodied.

For the last few days I've been struggling with a nasty bug and have felt very mortal. Bruce's approach made an awful lot of sense to me.

What would you do for a friend?

This week's talk by John von Heyking was really interesting and I've been talking with people about it ever since. The main focus of his talk was the issue of the implications for civic friendship of Canada's political culture. He began though by looking at studies of Canadians' views of friendship. One of the questions people were asked was whether they could rely on their friends and a high percentage said that they could. The numbers dropped significantly though when people were asked whether or not they could borrow money from their friends. John's question was does it mean to rely on our friends. Then he asked how many people outside of our immediate families were we willing to die for. At the break we decided probably the more challenging question was how many people were we willing to live for.

Since then I've had a number of conversations with friends about the variations of what it means to live for others from are you willing to take over a casserole if they have a death in their family to would you be willing to take over their personal care if they were sick for six months. Some of the folks I've talked to about this have found this a really uncomfortable topic. I think it raises the fear that maybe we can't count on people in tough times. A couple of people commented that they weren't sure people could always count on their immediate family either in a tough time. I wonder though if it wouldn't be easier for people to live out that vow to their spouse if they had the support of a whole community.

John asked the question of whether or not Canada's political culture encouraged the kind of virtues needed to form these kinds of friendships before turning to the issue of civic friendships. I wondered whether or not the church is a place where these kinds of friendships form. I know we talk a lot about Jesus' example of service and the call to love our neighbours but I think the cultural forces that isolate us and encourage self-obsession are strong and difficult to resist.

Friendship Series

Our series on friendship continues tonight at the library and I'm looking forward to hearing what John von Heyking has to say about the possibilities of friendship in a liberal democracy.

Last week I spoke about the tension within the Christian tradition between the recognition of the ways in which friendship can deepen our love of God and can be seen as a gift of grace from God and the commitment to a more universal, non-exclusive love of neighbour. This dance between exclusive, particular committed relationship and an openness to others plays itself out in so many places and in so many kinds of relationships. Here's to being light on our feet.

Friendship Talk

Last night we began our lecture series on friendship. Bill Cade, the president of the U of L, gave a very funny and interesting introduction to the series using examples of friendship from the insect realm and then I gave my talk on whether it is possible for Christians to be friends. More on that later.

Annual Lecture Series

"Why Can't We Be Friends?  possibilities for friendship in the 21st century"

Eight Annual Lecture Series
Wednesday Evenings
7:00 pm
Lethbridge Public Library


Jan. 23rd      Erin Phillips, Ecumenical Campus Ministry,
"Can Christians be friends?"

Jan. 30th      John von Heyking, University of Lethbridge,
"Can Canadians be friends?"

Feb 6th     Bruce MacKay, University of Lethbridge,
"Can people with disabilities be friends?"

Feb 13th     Marko Hilgersom, Lethbridge College,
"Can e-Friends be friends?"

Co-sponsored by Ecumenical Campus Ministry, Office of the President,
Lethbridge College, Office of the President, University of Lethbridge,
and Lethbridge Public Library





  

More from What I Saw in America

There is another great post today on What I Saw in America on friendship in the age of Facebook. I guess it is obvious that I really like this blog a lot. This post, like his one on Charles Taylor, has me thinking about a lot of things but I need to prepare for a discussion of Volf right now. Unchurch was also incredible last night and I want to write a little more on that. But for now...go read Patrick Deneen's blog!

More mulling

Tim made some really good comments in response to this morning's mullings that have got me thinking more about the issues he raised in his post last night.

Last summer I spent an afternoon with a group of friends and we had a long conversation about community. We split into two distinct groups. For those of us born and raised before the age of internet (I only got email about 15 years ago) community was about eating meals together, taking soup to a sick friend, lending a hand with a chore, spending an evening watching a movie.... For the group born more recently community was about finding a like minded group, usually on line, to talk with. The conversation became quite heated as they argued that it wasn't safe, nor desirable, to get to know your neighbours.

Part of the issue was their perception of safety and vulnerability which is a whole issue in itself. But part of it was what Tim is raising and that is the tendency to disembodied or 'gnostic' relationships. I think he is right that we are tempted to find in internet 'community' relationships where we get none of the hassles, or the joys, of relating to real live in the flesh people. I don't think it is a coincidence that none of the younger folks in our conversation were involved in a church or community organization where they would be forced to work together with people very different than themselves. I too think that this is really problematic.

I guess my point in raising Paul and 84 Charing Cross Road was to say that it is possible to develop relationships of significance only through written form. But I certainly agree that in those relationships is also a longing for physical presence. Helen laments that because of circumstances she is unable to make it to London to meet Frank in the flesh before he dies. And Paul had visited these churches he would later correspond with. And I look forward to meeting Tim one day too :-)

Part of the issue Tim is raising relates I think to the issues of vulnerability and safety that my friends raised. Part of the advantage they see in relating through the internet is that they think that it is safer. They can conceal their identity, they can choose what they reveal of themselves to others, they can conceal themselves if things get creepy. We tried to argue that it makes you safer when you know your neighbours (never mind enriching your life in so many ways) but they didn't buy it.

What astounds me now that I'm on facebook and reading blogs is how often people don't seem to worry about safety (emotional, financial, physical) when they reveal all sorts of things on line. And as Tim points out people are often not very civil on line. One of the older participants in our conversation last summer made the point that people have a really odd inverted sense of 'privacy' when they don't want their neighbour to have their phone number but they talk about their sex lives on the internet.

I have discovered all sorts of interesting books, music, films, art by reading blogs. And I've 'met' some interesting people. I've read some interesting reflections and I have gotten some great ideas for my ministry. But I'm mindful of my friend who said she decided she should start spending more time with her 'in the flesh' family and less time on line with her virtual community.

Btw, our spring lecture series put on by the chaplaincy/university/college and public library this year will be on friendship and I hope one of the talks will be on virtual friendships. Stay tuned for more details.

Some mullings

Paul maintained a relationship with Christian communities through letters.

Historically a number of famous friendships have been maintained through letters.

84 Charing Cross Road, the book and the movie, is a true story about a friendship that is conducted almost entirely through letters. Frank died before Helen met him.

Does this say something about the possibility of friendships/community being established or maintained through letters?

Are letters different than the internet?

Are we ruder on the internet because we are disembodied from each other or are we ruder because we are becoming less civil everywhere?