I just read the blog of a minister who mentioned dating again after a divorce. “I didn’t know the Anglican Church permitted divorced ministers,” I say to Roy.
(Evidently, what I don’t know about the Anglican Church can fill a blog. I learn more every day, even in the arcana of my own church. I see a member of staff is a Missioner! What’s that? What’s a Parish Vicar? A Pastor of Theology?)
Roy snorts. “The Anglican Church was founded on divorce,” he says. (We are ex-Catholics, so forgive our reductionist history.)
He sees gleam in my eye which tells him that this conversation is going to be recorded. In my journal if he’s lucky; on Facebook or my blog, if he’s not.
He reads my thoughts; we’ve been married for 21 years after all. “I’ll attribute it,” I offer generously.
“Oh don’t bother!” he says. “I do not want to be a public figure. I want to operate privately.”
Now where have I heard that before? I ask him.
It comes to us, the PR advice his cocky disciples offer Jesus. “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. 4No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” John 7.
Facebook and Twitter and blogging have apparently inaugurated a culture in which everyone is a celebrity, and shares their thoughts and movements with the world in 240 or 140 characters.
But the phenomenon of the public figure, of a life lived in the public arena, and advice on how to get there is apparently not new at all.
