(UNDATED) If you think “cloud computing” is an odd concept, try “cloud religion.”
It happens like this.
I grew up in a wonderful neighborhood church, where “church friends” were best friends, parish suppers were magical, and everything I knew about God was found in the mellifluous voice of our pastor and happy Sundays spent singing and worshiping with my family.
Like computer programs and files that exist only on the hard drive of a single workstation, my religious experience was rooted in a single place. It never occurred to me that I could pray in other places. For years after leaving home, I had nothing to do with church.
When adult needs led me to join a parish in Massachusetts, I remained tethered to location. Like immigrants who sought ethnic parishes in the New World in order to stay connected with “home,” I invested heavily in a succession of single parishes in hope of reclaiming the rootedness of my childhood.
As a pastor, I would fill up my work and family life with the doings of a single faith community, as well as my computer’s hard drive with words and data associated with that church.
It was wrenching to change churches. I had to reinvest in a new place. I inevitably bought a new computer. Just as writing meant getting to a certain keyboard, worshiping meant going inside a certain building. I knew other places existed, but they weren’t “my place.”
All that is changing now. So-called “cloud computing” _ using software online, writing and storing documents at a Web site accessible anywhere, moving seamlessly from office to home to hotel to airport lounge, from workstation to laptop to smartphone _ has ended my bondage to a single C: drive.
In a parallel development, I have discovered that prayer can happen anywhere. Prayer doesn’t require pew or book. In fact, the God who is found out there often seems more vivid and complex than the managed presentation of denomination or parish.
Faith, it seems, is profoundly portable. We are descended from wanderers, after all, who found God “on the way,” not in a place.
Lest you deem this a pallid so-what discovery, think about how much energy we devote to sustaining buildings and places. Think about our devotion to denomination and tradition and the way we compartmentalize, as if work and faith were unrelated enterprises.
Think about the caustic divisions by which religions undermine societies. Think about the arrogance of right-opinion, which is little more than insisting my sandbox is better than yours.
I find the “cloud computing” and “cloud religion” eras profoundly liberating. I can work anywhere and seek God anywhere.
The “holy war” between Mac and PC partisans means nothing to me. I have been set free from operating systems and gear and allowed to focus on writing, thinking and creating.
Same with faith. From within the cloud, religious controversies seem a sad sideshow. The larger concern is community, not buildings. All ground feels holy, not just the sacred space across town. All people bear fragments of the divine, not just the single tribe with whom I work. All situations can reveal God, not just the vetted and venerated.
I can turn to God whenever I want, and say to God whatever my heart burns to say.
(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)
DEADSB END EHRICH
A photo of Ehrich is available via https://religionnews.com