Two things inspired me to reflect on the topic of spirituality and nonprofit technology:
- My dear old friend Michelle Murrain recently wrote a blog article on "Spirituality and Technology." It's wonderful to benefit from her reflections. When she and I were students together at Bennington College, I never dreamed that we'd wind up in roughly the same profession, let alone that we'd ever agree on any spiritual question. I was a Randista-style atheist, and Michelle was a very conservative Christian. Time passes, and things change, and it turns out that we have a lot in common spiritually.
- An acquaintance asked me at a recent Boston 501 Tech Club event about whether I was a computer scientist by training. Upon hearing about my previous life at Harvard Divinity School and in sociology of religion, he exclaimed, "How did you get so far off track?"
In fact, I think I'm pretty much on track.
I won't bore you with too many details about what I believe and practice,(1) partly because such things are subject to change, and partly because God is a much better instructor than I am. If God hasn't told you to believe and practice the same things I do, it's probably because God doesn't think you need to.
At any rate, I started down the track of the academic study of religion. At some point, it became clear to me that spirituality (if not religion) was something more than a social neurosis or cultural pathology. Somewhat later, I realized that I was unhappy as an academic, and bailed out. By this time, I had become enamored of computers.
I flailed around a while, working on short-term technology-related projects, and really began to hit my stride when a small educational foundation hired me to computerize its accounting systems. The next thing I knew, its executive director and chief visionary, Charlotte Harris, wrote me into a project that needed someone with information technology skills and a social research background. I derived a lot of joy from finding ways to do things with with technology that were not merely fun but actually beneficial to the wider community. With that, I began to get a clue about an earthly vocation that that was really different from what I had envisioned for myself in college and graduate school.
As time passed and things changed, I've become gradually clearer about what I'm doing and why. I sometimes say jokingly, "I live only to serve." However, I don't really claim that service to others is my only purpose, or even that I'm particularly altruistic.(2) I just claim that there's a spiritual reason that I do the work I do.
I like the questions that Michelle poses in her blog article:
I doubt that I will ever come up with definitive answers. I suspect that it's no use whatsoever to listen to me talk about the relationship between spirituality and nonprofit technology, unless you have some reason to believe that my opinions hold some entertainment value for you. Rather, the answers will be in what I do, however imperfectly I do it. I make a lot of mistakes, but I do my (imperfect) best to express in my work the spiritual values that are most important to me.
1) Over time, I've evolved into a heartfelt though slovenly theist, and carried on in my family of origin's tradition of unsynagogical Jewishness.
2) My friend John McNutt(3) claims that only a person who is "all good" would scoff the way I do about about the notion that I'm the least bit altruistic. Of course, I scoff at the notion that I'm all good.
3) When I told John that I was writing a blog article on the topic of spirituality and nonprofit technology, his response was, "The Geek Squad meets the God Squad." I gotta love this guy.
In the photo above, you can see my beloved elder sister Stephanie Landers (a genuine synagogical Jew) and me on the recent occasion of her eldest son's bar mitzvah. We were all very proud of my nephew Seth Marius, so I will add a bonus photo below. Seth is the young gentleman in the maroon shirt. Stephanie is the lady in a state of maximum naches.
