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Diana Seago,
OSB
Linda Herndon, OSB
Benedict´s description of the porter of the monastery has always been a source of fascination for us. We sense here, as much as in Chapter 53 "On the Reception of Guests, " a real delight in, and respect for, those pilgrims who present themselves at the monastery door. As we all know, and as Benedict is quick to point out, guests are never lacking in a monastery. RB 53: 16 For many of us, the presence of guests is a daily occurrence. Our manner of receiving guests probably has not changed dramatically over the centuries. Pilgrims still come to our front or back doors for varied reasons and with diverse needs. We attend to their needs and share what we have with them, conscious of the fact that they are the presence of Christ in our midst, a gift to our communities.
As the new millennium dawns, we are beginning to witness, consciously or unconsciously, a radical change in the way we receive some guests in the monastery. In fact, many of our monasteries are beginning to need two porters . . . one to meet guests who visit in person and one to greet guests who visit us in cyberspace, via the Internet. In the past few years, the global community has become our neighborhood. With the proper technology in place, we are easily able to make connections with our relatives, friends and other monastics across town or across the globe. As we begin to create community homepages, we find that our monastic webkeepers (those who maintain our homepages) have literally become "monastic porters of the Internet". We would like to share a few reflections about our experiences in this ministry as monastic porters in the world of cyberspace.
First, we would like to be clear about the difference, in our experience, between a monastic webweaver and a webkeeper. Our webweavers are those who create our home pages. They are the ones who assemble the team which designs the pages, creates the graphics, builds the information tables, enters the original data, makes sure the pages are accessible by the disabled and that the HTML (source code) validates. The webkeepers, on the other hand, are those who answer the email from our guestbook pages and email links, frequently check the links provided on the page and keep them current, and update the page when new information becomes available. Many times both of these ministries belong to the same person... but not always. Sometimes communities choose to hire out the work of webweaver and then, after the page is designed, ask one of the community members to maintain the page. Whatever the choice, we believe it is as important that a community member be involved in the greeting of and care of cyberguests as it is for a member of our communities to greet the guests who arrive daily at our monastery doors. With this clarification in mind, we would like to discus the ministry of webkeeper and how it impacts the monastery, the webkeeper, and our pilgrim guests.
No one would dispute the fact that Benedict was a man of vision. Even Benedict, however, would be surprised to find that his attitude toward pilgrim guests would fit with the modern day understanding of the purpose of a web page. A web page, at its best, becomes a welcoming portal to those who are searching for different types of information. Benedict´s concern that guests or visitors be greeted by a competent porter is evidenced in the Rule when he says that the porter must be a person who can "take a message and deliver a reply. "One of the first things we discovered after putting our community home page on the web is that visitors wanted to comment about the page itself or something related to it. They wanted to ask questions about sisters they had known in the past, to ask for prayers, or simply question what it means to be monastic. Their questions call for a reply. The internet is an interactive media and once a live link is included on our community home page, the interaction begins. Someone must be there to answer. This is where the challenge for the cyber-porter begins. We quickly discovered that it can, at times, be difficult to convey via email what our feelings or attitudes are about any given subject. Reading the written word takes away the possibility of voice inflection, eye contact, and hand movements. Benedict tell us that the porter must be a person who provides an answer to questions, "with all the warmth of love. " It takes some practice and considerable thought to be able to answer a complete stranger "with all the warmth of love. " The "strangers " often respond to that warmth with a graciousness of their own and the gift is returned a hundred-fold.
The cyber-porter of the monastery must be a person of discretion. It is important to know how much to say and what not to say since "written media tend to hold writers more accountable for their actions than spoken media "(Ed Krol, The Whole Internet User´s Guide and Catalog). According to Wendy Lehnert in Internet 101, A Beginner´s Guide to the Internet and the World Wide Web, "email is not a suitable medium for everything. " Email is not protected by the same laws as govern the U.S. mail. If privacy is a concern, then email is not the appropriate medium for this type of exchange. Telephones, snail mail, and personal conversation still hold an important place in our world today.
Benedict also placed a great deal of importance on the fact that the porter should be a person "who´s age keeps them from roaming about ". We all know how frustrating it is to take the time to visit someone only to find them not at home. If we make our websites available to interaction by placing a guestbook or a live email link on them, we have to be "at home " to answer the inquiries of the pilgrims who visit our sites. If the webkeeper goes out of town for a week of retreat or a visit to relatives, what happens to those who email the monastery while he/she is gone? Since email is so immediate, most people expect that their inquiries will be answered in a timely manner. Have we considered a replacement for our monastic cyberporter while he/she is out of the monastery? Benedictine hospitality would prompt us to weigh this option. Just as we take great care to provide for the needs of our guests in our monasteries, we must also take great care to provide for the needs of our cyber guests.
"This porter will need a room near the entrance so that visitors will always find him (her) there to answer them. " Benedict was obviously a man who believed in giving his monks the resources they needed to do their job. Like the porter, the webkeeper needs a place to work and the tools needed to handle the ministry. The webkeeper needs enough time to answer email and guestbook entries, time to update the home page regularly, and time to help those members of the community who would like to learn more about the home page. It is important that we examine our schedules and be certain that we have the time to give to this ministry so that it does not begin to take precedence over our lives of prayer and community. If we do not have time to attend to the web page, we may be better off not having one. It is very frustrating to take the time to look for a web page only to find that the information is old and outdated or, worse yet, that the link no longer functions. Wendy Lehnert in Internet 101, A Beginner's Guide to the Internet and the World Wide Web , 1998 states that "URLs have a half-life of about 6-12 months. This means that for any collection of URLS that are operational today, at least half are likely to produce "Not Found" error a year from now. " Since her book was published, the half-life of a URL has become 4 months. The need to keep web pages updated can be quite demanding in terms of time requirements. This need is often not understood by those who do not work regularly with this medium and can be a source of tension in communities if it is perceived that the webkeeper is simply "surfing the web. "
"As soon as anyone knocks, or a poor man (person) calls out, he (she) replies, "Thanks be to God or Your blessing, please; " Is there any more beautiful way to welcome a guest? Is there anything more poignant about that welcome than to be able to say to a complete stranger, thanks be to God for your presence in my life? Is there anything that we Benedictines are known for if not for this prayer of wreckless hospitality? The cyber-porter has the job of maintaining a beautiful, yet simple presence which draws people to stop and be for a while. Many people have commented on the serenity they find available to them on our monastic home pages. This serenity is as important as any information they might find.
We hear so much about the lurking dangers of being on and using the web. There are stories about hackers who are ready to invade our databases. We experience spammers who live to fill our mailboxes with cyberjunk. There are regular news articles about desperately sick individuals who use the web as a clearing house for pornography and entrapment. We hear about our youth being addicted and our elderly being left out. There is concern about access to the Internet being only for the wealthy, leaving most of the population in the world without a chance at the new possibilities offered by this technology. Sadly, all of this is true. But it does not have to be the last word! We have an effect upon the people with whom we come in contact. We can make a difference by our attitude of openness and hospitality. Email contact puts all on equal footing. There is no way to distinguish between peoples in any way whether it be financial, physical ability, or location. It has been our experience that many of our cyber guests have been astounded that someone would take the time to respond to their comments about our web site. In our world today, people are not used to the "courtesy of love. "
People are more used to an indifferent world filled with strangers whom they will never meet or for whom they will never be responsible. What a shock it has been to so many to receive a response that they have come back to say... "I never dreamed you would respond to me. " They have always been grateful and astonished when offered hospitality in this way. Some of these people have continued to be in contact with members of our community and are daily reminders to us of the hunger of many in the world for a deepening of their relationship with God and others. In his study entitled Homenet , Robert Kraut from the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, discovered that people on the Internet, "build shallow relationships, leading to an overall decline in feeling of connection to other people. "Is it no wonder then that people are surprised to get a response when they sign a guestbook? Do we not imagine that strangers in Benedict´s time were startled by how well they were treated when they visited a monastery? The times have changed, but ours is still a world full of people in need of connecting with others.
It seems Benedict was foreseeing the future when he instructed, "Let the porter be given one of the younger brothers (sisters) if he (she) needs help. " The reality in community today is that the younger members do have much to offer to the cyber porter and their communities. They bring the experience of having "grown up" with computers. They know the language, the protocol, and have the training many of us older community members lack. A newer member may desire to bring a community's site "up to date " with the latest bells and whistles, showing off all their knowledge and skills. The community site may appear as "out of date " or "old "to one who is used to the scrolling advertisements, flashing messages, and wild colors. It is the job of the webkeeper to help the newer member grow in the simplicity and hospitality that a community tries to exhibit via its web site. Likewise, the community's webkeeper needs to be open to learning new things from the younger and, quite possibly, more computer literate member. Depending upon the size of the community, it may take more than one person to keep a site functioning properly. Our younger community members can be a great help in this regard while making a contribution to the welfare of the community as a whole.
Finally, another part of the webkeeper´s ministry may be to serve as the "moderator "of a chat room. What would be the purpose of a chat room on a monastic web site? We have considered having a chat room available to discuss religious vocations, to discuss spiritual topics, to discuss what life is like in our monastery, etc. If we were to open a chat room on our web site, it would be the job of the webkeeper to be present, monitoring the discussion. We would not want people using our site in a way that is not consonant with who we are. We assume that if people are using our chat room they would like input from a community member. However, having someone monitor the chat room will be a challenge for those involved. Decisions must be made and guidance must be given about how much one shares with a stranger. Email has shown us that it is often easier to say something to an "anonymous someone " on the other end of the computer than a person sitting across from you. What is appropriate to share in a given situation? How personal and revealing can we and should we be. The webkeeper´s ministry is crucial here because he or she will be called upon to exercise right judgement in appointing a person to oversee the chat room and the information about the monastery that is given to the visitors. The hours to have a chat room staffed by a community member is a concern, also. Schedules in monastic houses tend to be quite different than those kept by most other people. We would not want a chat room commitment to take precedence over communal prayer and activities.
Our webkeeper´s (cyber-porter´s) job will continue to increase in responsibility as our connections with the world beyond expand in ways which we can only begin to imagine. Never in our wildest imaginations could we have dreamed in 1988 that we could be writing an article about the ministry of the cyber porter. The word "cyberspace " was just starting to be used, the Internet as we know it today was not yet born, and the idea that a monastery would need to have a home page was unthinkable. In the November 1998 Initiatives in Support of the Christian in the World, a newsletter published by the National Center for the Laity, Bill Droel wrote an article entitled "Lonely in Cyberspace "in which he comments on the Homenet study. He concludes the article with two pointed questions: "What is the Christian wisdom? "and "How do we appease the Internet? " We would add, "What is the Benedictine wisdom for the Internet? " and "What gift of our 1500 years experience is most needed in this newest global "community? " These are the questions we must ask ourselves and our communities. The answers are starting to come, but even more questions loom on the horizon. Now is the time for us as Benedictines to embrace these questions and use our "wisdom from the ages " to bring a presence to the World Wide Web which no one before has yet imagined.
Sister Barbara Ann Mayer, OSB
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