Revisingreform meets Pluralist Speaks

Tonight I met Adrian Worsfold (he came to tea - how jolly) with whom I have been sharing blogposts for nearly four years now. Adrian is a Unitarian, he has contributed to Episcopal Cafe and keeps his own blog: Pluralist Speaks. He commentates on goings-on in the Church of England on a number of fronts and explores the positives and negatives of the Unitarian church.

Adrian has studied the sociology of Religion and has engaged with Anglicanism from an academic perspective for numerous years. He was really interesting to talk to and it struck me how much we understood about each other's mindsets because we have been reading each other's reflections on faith for a number of years. We also talked about those other virtual friends whose minds we seem to know or perhaps think we know through our own interpretative lenses. When is knowing really knowing? How much do bloggers expose a real version of who they are? Perhaps it is not that there is a lack of authenticity, just that there are decisions to be made about what it is appropriate to reveal.

We talked about how some bloggers expose more and others less about their lives and opinions. There are personalities on display, sometimes hearts, often brains, wit and controversy and in Adrian's case quite a number of caricatures of many folk that have certainly caused my kids to laugh as they have guessed whether that looks anything like mummy or not - some pictures have been very close to the mark. There are bloggers finding it difficult to get posts and bishops whose blogging has helped their appeal and many in between these two extremes.

...so perhaps one day all these bloggers in their blogging circles could share food and conversation together - it would look something like facebook in the flesh all occurring in google plus circles of chairs with cuppas on the go and plenty of food and chat - sounds like quite a nice idea really. Now if I was Adrian I might draw that but seeing as I am me and a poem would be way too twee, I will leave that task to my now less virtual friend and herein my reflection on this evening will end!

It could be that Graham Richards is organising something at Greenbelt - I know there was a tweet that went around about the social media brigade getting together. I can not go but keep me in the loop someone out there please.