if i could bake for the internet (or, see you next week)

Dear Internet, I'm done. And, honestly, Internet, it's really not you; it's me.

I've been extremely blessed to call some pretty remarkable people by the name of friend in the online world, friends who are releasing books, writing books, flying to other countries, changing the world by simply following when they hear the winded voice call, Go.

But, Internet, you've been kind of nasty lately. You've made a lot of assumptions about people and their hearts, have taken single blog posts and have believed it tells you all that a person is, have gone as far to completely dismiss other opinions or wax poetic about how long suffering you are in patiently explaining them away, as if you were the only adult at a table full of children.

(And oh, how much I have to say about this, because children are so much wiser than we are.)

Earlier this week, I wrote about how I need to bake things out.

If I could, Internet, I would bake it out for you. I'd feed you homemade bread and pour you wine, I'd ask how your family was and where you plan to take the Holidays. We'd have our ideological fight and we'd pull out our books, we'd point fingers and raise our voices, but we'd also bless the food and perhaps pray for one another at the end. That's how it would go, Internet, if I could invite you over to my flat and sit you down at my table and feed you the best I had to offer and just listened to you as long as you needed to talk.

And you may change me.

I may change you.

He may change both of us.

Might have. That's what I should have said. Might have.

Internet, you're not in my flat. You're not in my kitchen. You're not sitting at my table.

I can't feed you. I can't even listen well.

I told the truth: it's really not you; it's me.

I don't like who I am right now. I don't like that I read some of what you have to say about my friends and I end up pissed at the nothingness that you are, the facelessness that you are, and I turn who you represent into a monster even though if I could see them, hear them, touch them, I would be feeding them.

I become graceless. And that's on me. That's on me, Internet. It's not you, it's me.

So I need to walk away.

I need to not do this thing for a little while. Between now and next Monday: no new posts here, no Twitter, no Facebook. I'll be on email from time to time, but I need a break from social media and the comment sections.

I'll read the blogs of the people I love, because their words keep my flickering lamp lit on the days I call for Light and it seems far off. And, no hard and fast rules, I may leave some comments there. Because, Internet, we need more encouraging words. (Convicting word, too. Just with some sense of grace. Or, sense.)

If I could bake for you, Internet. If I could.

But I can't. And I don't want to be this spiteful person toward you.

I don't want to be this spiteful person toward any of you.

See you next week.

Love,

Meet Preston

Preston is a twenty-something once-upon-a-time conservative Southern Baptist from Texas who learned to read saints, cross himself, and move across the world to China, England, and Scotland. Since, he's been theologically conservative, oft politically liberal, but radically pro-life, a believer in sacraments and sacramentality, a sort-of Christian feminist, an idealist pacifist who also understands the need for civil defense ... and a handful of everything else in-between. He thinks of himself now as a haphazard and patchwork Bapto-Anglican, though he is becoming confirmed in the Anglican tradition. This blog is his repository of working this whole faith thing out day by day, bird by bird. His first book, Tables in the Wilderness, a memoir of God found, lost, and found again, is due out autumn 2014 with Zondervan.