General Convention is paper-less. Since there will be anything up to 6000 people here, that’s a lot of trees. So we headed for the Eucharist today with the rather intriguing request, ‘Bring your devices’. This is yet another of those ‘divided by a common language’ moments – devices being tablets and smartphones.
Of course they hadn’t made it easy. Wifi in the Convention Center (sic) is very flakey so the congregation were trying to get signal to download the Order of Service before they went in.
‘Bring your devices’ produces a rather ‘heads down’ worship experience.
The Intercessions carried this instruction
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
Throughout the General Convention, God’s people near and far are submitting prayer requests in words and images through social media. All of these prayers can be read and prayed online: on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and through prayersofthepeople.org. Add your prayers using #prayersof and a hashtag for each day’s theme —for example, tomorrow’s theme will be #prayersof #thanksgiving.
And then there was the ‘do I bring my IPad when I go to receive the sacrament? The consensus seemed to be ‘No’
I know – it tells us that when people lose the language of the Book of Common Prayer they lose the understanding that ‘devices’ is not a neutral word. And then there is PD James
‘We have followed too much the devices…’