Here’s an interesting use for twitter: Take your most regrettable mistakes and share them with the world (or at least the world as it exists on twitter.) As Jews gathered last week for the beginning of Yom Kippur, a group at Harvard Hillel was urging its members to confess their sins on twitter, as a more public atonement. According to a story reported by Atlantic magazine, last year the group came up with another unique approach to confession by asking everyone to write their wrongdoings in a hat so they could be incorporated during service. This year they proposed an even more public approach.
Atlantic reports that there hasn’t been a flood of tweeted sins, so to speak. A few people questioned whether the idea was even valid. But a couple serious tweets did appear. One said, “I have judged people before getting to know them.” Another spoke of not using “my power as a citizen to influence our government for good.”
It’s a provocative idea – since the internet is a place that so often gets used to boast about our achievements. But hearing about the mistakes of others can also help us identify the practice in ourselves. If we don’t jump to judgement, it brings us into community, and makes our mistakes feel not so insurmountable.
Perhaps it’s something we need to try more often: writing down our errors in judgment, omission, or intent as a better way to force us to confront them. It may even work as a youth group or children’s sermon discussion – especially if the adults also join in with their own “confessions.” That could all be done anonymously: often finger-pointing gets in the way of discussing proactive approaches to change. And I am not sure we all need to tweet them, but the potential influence of doing so is certainly a good discussion to have with our youth, who see the internet as a much deeper source of conversation than the rest of us.
If you want to check out the Atlantic article click here:http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/to-prepare-for-yom-kippur-confess-your-sins-on-twitter/262839/
Atlantic reports that there hasn’t been a flood of tweeted sins, so to speak. A few people questioned whether the idea was even valid. But a couple serious tweets did appear. One said, “I have judged people before getting to know them.” Another spoke of not using “my power as a citizen to influence our government for good.”
It’s a provocative idea – since the internet is a place that so often gets used to boast about our achievements. But hearing about the mistakes of others can also help us identify the practice in ourselves. If we don’t jump to judgement, it brings us into community, and makes our mistakes feel not so insurmountable.
Perhaps it’s something we need to try more often: writing down our errors in judgment, omission, or intent as a better way to force us to confront them. It may even work as a youth group or children’s sermon discussion – especially if the adults also join in with their own “confessions.” That could all be done anonymously: often finger-pointing gets in the way of discussing proactive approaches to change. And I am not sure we all need to tweet them, but the potential influence of doing so is certainly a good discussion to have with our youth, who see the internet as a much deeper source of conversation than the rest of us.
If you want to check out the Atlantic article click here:http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/to-prepare-for-yom-kippur-confess-your-sins-on-twitter/262839/
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