January 28th
Today, we lived through a monster storm. The weather people had been tracking the thing for days, network putting up suggestions about getting enough candles and things – just in case. We ended up with about a quarter of an inch of snow on our windshields. I’m told it was more interesting up north. What we did get was a freezing wind that beat the pasture into a sort of frozen surf.
Last night, President Hinkley died. (The long-time and well-beloved president of our church.) I am not going to write out my feelings about that, other than to say I had them. What I do want to talk about is a sort of epiphany I had today, thinking about the aftermath of that news. It was Guy’s sister in Orem who called us about it. We were watching PBS at the time, which did not register the sudden rocking of the earth. It took Gigi calling for us to find out. And then it began.
Within ten minutes I had called one of my kids in Missouri, another in San Diego and my family in Texas. And then I sent an email that went to New York, Virginia, Washington, Northern England—so many places. Some of our friends in England had already heard about it from some friends in the Netherlands. Evidently, the news – like puck – circled the globe in less than forty minutes.
The daughter in a shirt her brother designed (to order – -in Engrish) in Gimp and Inkscape and had printed (to order) at Cafe-press. Self publishing gone fabric.
But that isn’t the amazing part. What is truly astonishing has to do with the youth of the church. If every message that left every cell phone had been laser visual, the entire country would have been overlaid by a woven fabric of light. Within half an hour kids – connected by face-to-face friendships, or myspace or facebook friendships – had sent out mass texts, consoling each other and laying plans to show respect by wearing their Sunday best to school the next day – that or yellow (why yellow?).
This is a different world than the one we grew up in; in those old days, you could be completely isolated, the only LDS kid in your school, or alone among many in your ward who just weren’t like you at all – a world full of single kids, quiet, unconnected, in too many ways alone. But now, the kids are connected to people all over the planet, a lonely kid in Wisconsin best friends with a kid in Paris and a kid in Ft. Lauderdale and a kid in Peru.
The Son, thrilled to get a new drive enclosure for Christmas – whoopie! For his interior Mac drive, recently replaced by a 120 Gig drive. Replaced by the boy himself, who is not afraid to void his warrantee. Or mine, for that matter.
Kids who once had nobody to talk to now talk to a world – all the time, at the speed of light. It’s true of all kids, but this sudden and mighty cohesion of our youth means something new for the future, something powerful, something that is growing quietly and geometrically. I am feeling the stirring of a new reality, and I can’t help but wonder where it will take us. It has to be an almost spiritual revolution because it has so little to do with physicality.
The married children, opening a gift from the far away married sister, who is watching the opening via video chat, as you can see by the open lap top, alert and broadcasting.
Like some kind of blossoming mass mind.
How interesting for the future.
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