Aldon Hynes caught my attention with his title, “an altar in cyberspace ”
I’m trying to imagine what that could be. What first comes to mind is the Old Testament style altar especially a the Levitical altar made of 12 undressed stones. The fact that it was basically a place to burn animal parts kind of overshadows the spiritual reality that it was a place of drawing near to the divine God, of being in awe. So I am trying to imagine a place in cyberspace around which we can experience drawing near. One such altar might be some #DigiWriMo blog posts that are very visual – especially the ones where beautiful scenes from nature might help us draw near. Poetry could be another altar in cyberspace, something that gives us pause, poetry that causes us to reflect.
Maybe I’m being far too literal here. There is another aspect of altar, the altar of sacrifice. Again drawing from the biblical old testament altar of sacrifice, those who brought sacrifices were expected to bring their very best as a gift to the God they held in awe. The sacrifice was also a material loss to them, something they gave up, or gave away. So now I’m thinking about gifting in cyberspace. Those who share deep thoughts, those who offer up their poems to the readers are making a gift. The readers are unseen but very real. Of course when you offer something up in cyberspace it’s really no loss to you at all. So perhaps it can’t exactly be called a sacrifice. Perhaps the thing that we really sacrifice is keeping to ourselves. If God is in every human, then communion, breaking out of our isolation may be that altar in cyberspace
I think I’m getting lost. Besides, Disqus is getting more and more reluctant about taking my input on the iPhone. I started this as a comment on Alden’s blog post. But I couldn’t seem to get past the login screen on mobile to post the comment, so I put it into my word press app and it has become my #DigiWriMo post for today.
