Adam Michael Wood
Essays and Poems

I have been trying to figure out how to continue to get the benefits I feel I am getting from using Twitter and Facebook, while minimizing the negative effects.

Positive benefits:

• ability to maintain a connection with friends and family I do not often see
• exposure to communities/identities otherwise under represented in my social and professional life
• opportunity to share my own creative work: blog posts, poems, songs, hymn texts

Negative effects:

• reduced attention span
• wasted time
• emotional agitation
• rhetorical escalation
• influence of fake news and toxic opinion on my own thinking
• fixation on the opinions and approval of others
• productization of my personal life and data
• monetization of my participation by awful people

It is clear to me that the benefits I am currently receiving are not worth the price I pay in negative consequences. Less clear is whether the posiive benefits can be expanded and the negative consequences minimized enough that it is worth continuing to engage in social media.

The following (in progress) guidelines are an attempt to lay out the circumstances under which I believe this could happen.

Appropriate Facebook posting

1. Regular, public Facebook posts should only be used for:

   • personal life updates and news
     • pictures of friends, family, food, or fun
     • conversation about my own life and the lives of the people I am talking to
     • poetry, songs, and hymns I have written
     • poetry, songs, and hymns I find inspiring

     • links to things I have written or produced, and links to news articles or blog posts by others, provided that:

       • I can vouch for the accuracy of the content.
       • I believe the content is interesting and valuable to my friends.
       • The content is not politically inflammatory.

   Specificially excluded are:

   • Inflammatory opinions about church, theology, liturgy, politics, economics, or similar topics.
     • Strongly held opinions about topics in which it is possible to be an expert, but in which I am in no way an expert.
     • Passive-aggressive reactions to other posts.
     • Rants of any kind.

2. My own thoughts and opinions about non-personal topics are best expressed in a relevant group or forum where people have chosen to discuss that topic.

3. Any post longer than two paragraphs should probably be a blog post instead. Write the post as a blog post, and then decide whether and where it should be shared.

4. If I am unsure whether or not a post is acceptable according to above criteria, it is not acceptable.

5. Posts appearing in Memories which violate any of the above shall be deleted.

Appropriate Twitter posting

1. Twitter is for posts about tech or church.

2. Twitter posts may contain controversial or even inflammatory opinions provided that:

   • I have verifiable knowledge, experience, or expertise informing the opinion.
   • The opinion can not be construed as a personal attack on those who disagree with the opinion.

General

1. Automate as much as possible.

   • Make it easy to write a blog post and share it.
   • Make it easy to cross-post appropriate posts.
   • Make it easy to check if a post violates the above guidelines.
   • Make it easy to post without seeing other posts.

2. Set limits on consumption. Enforce those limits with tools and automation.

3. Prefer blog posts and essays to short posts. (Both in reading and writing.)

4. Use ad-blockers to minimize my monetary value as a user.

5. Block and/or mute toxic people and content. Block and/or mute people who repeatedly share verifiably fake news or clickbait.

6. Do not rely on social circle for general news.

   Find a handful of actual news sitessources and subscribe directly.

7. a. Check privilege. b. Consider impact. c. No mansplaining. d. No rants. e. No endless, mindless scrolling.

“There but for the grace of God.”
What vain oath, or what wicked spell,
Canted when confronted by the odd
could better our presumption tame and tell?

For when we see the hungry or the poor,
the teeming wretched refuse of the Earth,
do we suppose that we are something more,
and not the hapless protégés of birth?

That God is gracious, I am ever sure,
and boundless are the reaches of that grace.
Yet all the ills of Earth do yet endure,
and many are the sorrows of our race.

So better seem the prosperous and healthy,
so damnable the sick of mind and soul,
so meritous the righteous and the wealthy,
so sad the broken, so at peace the whole.

Yet broken, blessed, and given unto dying
is every person on the pilgrim way,
And every sinner’s soul is ever crying,
and every dog and demon has a day.

The grace, then, of our God is hardly magic.
Though wondrous, it is not a wonderment.
We are not pagan people, comi-tragic,
seeking boons and blessing thunder-sent.

Do not be so confused as to consider
that fortune is a ray of grace’s light,
for every saint endures a trial bitter,
and every tyrant sleeps in peace by night.

Do not forget- yea, do not be mistaken—
for homelessness is all our native state,
and lest your faith by worldly ills be shaken,
be mindful of the life for which you wait.

Strawdogs we, and servants made to be,
and only God’s own grace has drawn us higher—
Not in our station, nor in ways we see:
Salvation and The World do not conspire.

So weep and pray for those in cold despair,
And do what all you can to ease their lot.
And when one day you find you’ve fallen there,
do not let grace’s reason be forgot.

I trust, O God, your Wisdom to fulfill
All needs I have, yet beg for blessings too.
But if you take all else, take first my will,
That I may know that all I need is You.

“I AM the Resurrection,” he said, “the Life am I.”
And who in Him have kept faith, not one of them shall die.
For all who trust our Savior, who call upon the Lord,
all they who live for Jesus shall find a sure reward
O God, in joy and sorrow, we sing our thanks and praise
To You, the Source and Ending, the glory of our days

I know my saving God lives, the Lord of my new birth,
I know that at on the last day He’ll stand upon the Earth.
And I shall be awakened and from the grave arise,
and I shall see my savior, my friend, with my own eyes.
O God, in joy and sorrow, we sing our thanks and praise,
to You, the source and ending, the glory of our days.

For none of us are living who have our life alone,
and from our birth to dying our lives are not our own.
For if we truly have life we are living in the Lord,
and if we die in Jesus, we find our sure reward.
O God, in joy and sorrow, we sing our thanks and praise,
to you, the source and ending, the glory of our days.

Meter: 13 13 13 (or 76 76 76)
Suggested Tune: THAXTED

I will have to call you tomorrow. I timeshare my telephone with several other non-profit organizations. Today the phone line is being used by the Penguin’s Association of Porcine Golf Enthusiasts.

Their slogan is “We like Pig Putts and we cannot fly.”

Twixt sorrow and the joy of being near,
We sing for comfort, and for God to hear.
Though fleeting comfort is, and absence long,
there is no cold despairing in our song.
For that same God who joined us also parts,
and strengthens for the breaking of our hearts.

Composer of the Heavens, make us new
That we might in all places sing for You,
And if it pleases, let it not be long
Til scattered friends again rejoice in song.

1. Everything communicates something. Everything.

2. Noble simplicity and liturgical minimization are not the same thing.

3. Traditional beauty and Noble Simplicity are not inherently antithetical.

4. Minimalism and minimization are not the same thing.

5. Minimalism and Noble Simplicity require thoughtful absence. They cannot endure an absence of thoughtfulness.

6. Cheap and simple are not the same.

7. Neither is expense an indicator of quality.

8. Solemn should not be confused with sad.

9. But sadness is a legitimate spiritual experience.

10. Seriousness and joyfulness are not opposites, nor are they exclusive of each other.

11. Sometimes, less is more. Often, less is less.

12. Symbols half-done are not symbols; they are talismans and witchcraft.

13. One should not confuse habit with tradition.

14. One should not confuse tradition with Tradition.

15. “It has always been done this way” is either the exact reason to keep doing something, or the exact reason to stop doing it.

16. “It’s never been done before” has a similar quality.

17. Black is the new black. It is also the old black.

Open Source Definitions Extension

Free like “free coffee”

This product was prepared at some unknown time in the past, for reasons which now seem inscrutable. It was pretty crappy to begin with, and has only gotten crappier through neglect. None of the needed accessories are available. However desperate you are for the benefits of the standard version of the product, you should not use this version under any circumstances. It would have been removed and thrown away if anybody responsible for its creation were still paying the slightest amount of attention to it. And anyway, who drinks coffee at this time of day?

“Nay, chiefly are we born to die,
it matters not” he says, and I,
though tempted, and like sailors drawn, to siren calls that bid them on,

I stay. Transfix’d by word,
so often read, so often heard,
my soul (must then it empty be?)
redoubles and re-sounds the sounds of Thee.

If emptiness be then my one defense
against seduction’s war on every sense,
remove from me, oh God, what fills my mind
that resonances there your Word may find.

And if my soul be empty, so my heart,
That it may sing the music of your Art.
My will, my life, my all be emptied too:
Libations poured out - nay, drawn out by You.

O Lord, who are the author of ever-living life, and the source of all wonder and mystery, bless, recognize, and approve these words, these clauses, these holy and undefiled enunciations, we humbly pray, both dependent and independent, which we offer you first of all on behalf of your Church, that by the anticipation of their conclusions, long forestalled by the mysterious work of your servants who, holding to the truth, handed them to us, and by the sincere searching for their venerable antecedents, we, though pitiable in our ignorance and darkened by the stain of sin, may come circuitously to the understanding of that enlightening grace by which you make your miraculous salvation known to all who speak, hear, and rightly understand the sacredness of these, your most holy and auspicious words.