Shane says he’s not morally opposed to cotton candy, as it can serve a legitimate — if limited — place in a person’s diet. “In the same way I am not morally opposed to virtual community; it also serves an important and limited function in our electronic culture,” he says. “The problem is that virtual community is slowly becoming the preferred means of relating.”

Now, I don’t intend for this essay to be construed as a polemic in support or defense of virtual community and/or online spirituality. But I do feel compelled to tell the story of an absolutely authentic, transformative phenomenon that truly has enlivened my faith. Caution is a natural reaction to systemic change in our culture, and surely the dawning of Web 2.0 is a real live paradigm shift. If we all stopped talking to one another in person and only communicated through blips on computer screens, humanity would suffer for it. But it’s equally dangerous to dismiss innovations in communication as frivolous or somehow fraudulent simply because they’re different. Is there a risk involved in becoming more “digital” and less “analog”? Absolutely. But so too is there an opportunity for God to make something beautiful out of something, if not ugly, at least soulless. The God I know is the God of infinite possibility and unimaginable creativity. God can use whatever God wants to connect us not only to him, but also to one another. When we open our hearts and minds to each other — whether face-to-face, in writing, in music, in art — a sacred exchange takes place. In my experience, the community of believers can be just as authentic and grace-filled, just as maddening and difficult, whether it happens in cyberspace or a cathedral.

As mentioned above, our virtual church is not immune to conflict, risk and rejection. We’ve wrestled through all of that and I’m sure we will continue to do so as long as we remain a community – virtual or not. Rather than replacing face-to-face interactions, the thread has for us been a blessing of addition not subtraction. Perhaps this echoes Shane’s point — virtual community can enhance physical community, but cannot truly replace it. Would that we could all walk down the block and plop down in each other’s living rooms. Unfortunately, we live all over the world and that’s just not possible most of the time.

Some of us do live near enough to spend physical time together and we do. The Daves are only a few blocks apart and more often than not, we know what they’re having for dinner, at whose house, and what wine they’ve decided to pair with it. Two of the women on the thread live in the same town where we all went to college, about a half hour away from me in the suburbs of Chicago. The more we “talk” online, the more we’ve wanted to also talk in person. And we do. When we do, we’ve found that the face-time is enriched by our shared cyberexistence.

Back in August, when my new book was released, my publisher threw a party for me in Chicago. The thread knew about it — as there’s not a whole lot about one another’s quotidian and extraordinary lives that we don’t talk about — and decided it was time for us to get together and share an actual meal, at an actual table, with actual wine. The Daves flew in from California, Susan drove up from St. Louis, Kathy flew in from New York City, Shani and Jen and their husbands made the short commute in from Wheaton, and James schlepped all the way to Chicago from Dubai. Yes, Dubai. Some of us hadn’t seen each other in almost 20 years. A few of us hadn’t even met in person. I think we were all a bit nervous about whether the physical thread would be more awkward than the virtual thread. Happily, nothing could have been further from the truth. We clicked immediately, without a moment’s hesitation. It was just like our daily conversations online, except the only thing standing between us were wine goblets and a table, not a computer screen and thousands of miles.

At our dinner in Chicago that night (see cover photograph), we were able to remember Mark together. An 8-by-10 framed portrait of the one I like to call “Sweet Face” sat on a special chair — the “grace chair” — festooned with brightly colored flowers and fig branches at the head of the table. We prayed together over the food, toasted each other, told stories, laughed until we cried (and a few times cried until we laughed). We thanked one another for being grace for each other. We thanked God for our friendship and, yes, for Facebook. The Daves asked me to get up and say a few words. I didn’t know how to express all that I was feeling, but as I looked down the table of friends to glimpse Mark’s picture in the grace chair, I knew what I wanted to say. What had begun with something ugly — grieving the unfathomable loss of our extraordinary friend — had turned into something magnificent. God, in his grace, does indeed make beauty out of ugly things. That night together, sharing a meal and the same physical space, was one of the most moving, blessed experiences of my life. We didn’t want it to end, as evidenced by the fact that many of us stayed up until dawn talking, laughing, reminiscing and making plans to see each other again in a different city on the East or West Coast as soon as we could swing it.

Rather than replace “actual” face-to-face community, the thread, in its virtual incarnation, makes us yearn to be in one another’s company. I think that has fueled the passion with which we keep our cyber-church going. When one or another of us is gone from Facebook for a few days, we miss each other. We ask where we’ve been. We go find each other. When I’ve been without a computer for a few days traveling, I get a longing ache for my brothers and sisters online. I miss them. I want the contact, that authentic community. My spirit craves it.

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