In the letter that my mom left for me to read after she passed away, she left one explicit command:
“Keep my phone.”
Later, I realized why. Painstakingly and over the six to eight months before her death, she filled the phone up with every single piece of information she could think of: passwords to accounts, account numbers, access information, contacts.
I transferred it all to my phone, and that gift has made life without her easier than it ought to be.
But what fascinates me most about my mom’s phone is her contact list. She had hundreds and hundreds of contacts, as I imagine many people do—but she has named hers in a way that cracks me up every time I look for them:
Susan
Susan’s Friend I Met At Kroger
Don’s Dentist’s Wife
Sherry
Sherry from the Anniversary Party
It has taken me months to figure out who some of these people are. My mom’s system differs very much from my dull first-name, last-name filing system. But I also find that kind of touching, because it speaks to the web of relationships that my mom had and cultivated.
There is a difference, after all, between a “contact” and a friend.
Social media is all about collecting contacts now. So, sometimes, are churches. Input your name, cell phone number, social media handle and all of a sudden you have access—to information, to generically-worded invitations, to “content.”
We might know some of our contacts. Many of us don’t know all of them. Some of our contacts are friends of friends of friends, of people who found us for reasons only they know. We collect information, wish each other’s happy birthdays, go on with our lives.
But my mom’s phone list is full of people with stories. And sometimes the stories are the way she filed them, so that she would remember. They are people she met at weddings, funerals, and parties, in the aisle at grocery stores, through other people at church. She cared about them. She knew about their sons and daughters and aunts and uncles, which is why so many of her contacts bear those names. She wrote them cards and took them food when they were sick.
I was thinking about this a month ago when I met a acquaintance at a social event. We had a lovely conversation, and when we parted ways she enthused, “Let’s connect!”
Two days later, she sent me a social media invite.
I was amused. But that’s not connecting, I thought, well aware I am rapidly becoming anomalous in my thoughts on this matter in our modern era. And it isn’t. To make a contact of someone, to know them in that ephemeral way through the internet or social media, may certainly be useful—may even have its own intrinsic value—but it’s not connecting.
I don’t mean that relationship has to take place in person. It doesn’t. I have friends who are geographically remote and we build relationship by investing time, energy, care—yes, even virtually. But that really is the trick of it. That’s what relationship demands, what real “connecting” demands: time, and energy, and care. It’s more than cultivating proximity to someone. It’s more than saying to someone, “I acknowledge you exist around me.”
I am becoming more and more convinced that the revolutionary work of the church lives in that space—that space of caring. Of giving up oneself in small ways to learn someone or become familiar with someone. Of going deeper than what our society tells us connection is. And I am equally convinced that we will falter when our churches become more secular in their approach to cultivating “connections.”
The people who made and make a difference in my life are the people who spend time with me—not because they have to, but because they choose to do so. And they are the people who know the things about me no one else knows, not because I’m secretive but because there’s only so much you can learn from superficial conversations and social media posts. In turn, I try to remember that much of my faith can only be lived out by investment in others.
Sometimes being called to a life of sacrifice doesn’t mean running to another country to evangelize, or taking metaphorical bullets for a political stance, or selling your car to feed the poor (although hey, if you can do that, go for it). Sometimes sacrifice and giving looks much smaller: like giving up some of what you would rather prioritize to spend that time with people who would otherwise be relegated to a name in your contact list, to make investments of your energy and your resources.
May your phones be filled with names like Carol’s daughter’s boyfriend.
Samaritan's Song 