It's been interesting to reconnect, mainly through Facebook, with people I knew years ago. Many of them were classmates in grammar school and/or high school. Some from college. I moved away from my hometown years ago and never went back, so I lost even the casual contact of the occasional meeting at the grocery store or shopping mall or high school graduation (now of children and grandchildren).
But now, with a few clicks, I can review a former classmate's past twenty or thirty years, see photos of children and grandchildren, family events, big occasions. I can see photos and read posts, and I like that. I don't foster the illusion that this connection is going to turn into a deep friendship because I still live in Chicago, and that person lives states away. We have our established lives and friends, and so there's no need to put pressure on this FB friendship to become more than it is.
In some ways, these reconnections add to my perspective of my own life. For instance, there's the guy I dated for awhile who has become a right-wing conservative evangelical. Actually, that describes both of us back then, but I am grateful now that the dating didn't lead to anything permanent because I am no longer that sort of believer, and that has nothing to do with the man I ended up marrying. My faith sojourn took me where I needed to go, and I suspect that, had I married back when I wanted so desperately to be married (not to that particular guy, but to others like him), the trajectory of my faith life would have led to divorce, or the marriage would have suppressed the growth I needed. Several bullets dodged there.
I also learn that one of the cool kids I would have liked to befriend but didn't because I was not cool--that person has become an ignorant racist, if certain FB posts are any indication. I learn that another popular kid has traversed a hard life that I would not have expected for such an upbeat, on-the-go teenager. Another person from my life back then has become an accomplished academic, and the trials of that childhood certainly did not point in that direction. Others have thrived, and most have sustained the normal damage of decades--illness, divorce, death of loved ones, jagged career paths.
Recently, one of my new-but-old friends on FB posted that her husband had decided to leave after a long life together. I have added my encouragement and compassion and what wisdom I can muster to the many good comments of other friends, comments that stream down the page in an overflow of concern. One of them, who lives close by, went to the other's home to spend the weekend--some girlfriend time to help the shock and pain. I went to church and vacation Bible school with both of them, and I am so proud to see the one supporting the other now at this impossible time.
In fact, it's been heartening to see how faith has held up for so many of the people I knew through church and other faith venues back then. Their posts are positive, faith-filled, good words for the world. And although I know that a lot of that comes from the parents who nurtured them and the organizations that helped form them, I also believe that the faith itself has had its own life in my girlhood friends and acquaintances. And the people they have become--the people represented by their collages of photos and posts and "shares"--are people I am proud to have known. People I still know. The online world offers yet one more arena for the communion of saints.
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