Showing posts with label Social Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Media. Show all posts

Thursday, March 10, 2011

a time to prepare

Turns out many Catholics are giving up things like Facebook for Lent (here)

According to good ol' Wikipedia"Lent in the Christian tradition, is the period of the liturgical year from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Lent is a time of sacrifice for Jesus. The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer — through prayer, repentance, almsgiving and self-denial — for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, which recalls the events linked to the Passion of Christ and culminates in Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ."

Now I may not be Catholic, but I do admire their process of preparation for Easter. I think it's something we could all learn from. A lot of the time Easter ends up sneaking up on us and then it's over; for some reason, we don't seem to give this important day nearly as much attention as it deserves. We spend months preparing for Christmas! On Easter we celebrate the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that is something worth thinking about before the actual day comes up. I think if anything this year I want to spend more time preparing and cleansing for this wonderful celebration. This year, I want to make it extra special, and maybe a spiritual spring cleaning is exactly what we need.

He is not Here  by Walter Rane

How do you prepare for Easter? Someday, in the not too distant future, we will have children and I want to make sure they understand the important of the Atonement. Easter is great for chocolate and eggs, but it's about so much more, and I hope that we will manage to teach them with the absolute importance of what the Savior did for them, and for all of us. Perhaps a good goal for these coming weeks would be to read "Jesus the Christ." I own it and have started it at various times, but maybe now is a perfect time to take it up seriously. And of course, spend less time on Facebook...

Are you observing Lent? (And yes, I realize it technically started yesterday, but better late than never)

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Twitterpated

I have a confession to make:

I'm Twitter-pated.

Seriously, I've spent the past few days figuring out this whole thing and now I'm hooked. I probably like it so much because it's news, nonstop, right now.

Just to think that this simple tool played a small part in the uprisings in the Middle East is incredible. It's pretty exciting to find people that are in the middle of the action and follow what they're saying. And I love the immediacy of it all. Twitter is a reporter's dream, on steroids: I can have immediate access to people as they are protesting on Tahrir square!

It's amazing what you can do with this! For example, follow the Utah Senate and BAM you have instant updates on what bills got passed and other relevant info. Follow a politician and get a feel for where his campaign may or may not be leading. Provo Mayor? You know what's going on in your community. And of course, follow friends, although not many of my friends are on twitter that I know of. (Hey, come on over to the dark side! Find me @LydiaDN)

And in the end, what's most amazing is the possibilities that this new format is bringing. Oh, the things I could do with an iPhone...