“Where is God in the Web?” I asked the Rev. Luminous the other day. He’s a brilliant minister, who happens to have a good-sized geek-streak that he mostly ignores. He’s got other things to do – including constantly inspiring me. Not that he spends a lot of time on that directly. It just sort of happens when I go to church.

I could see him flinch. (”Sorry,” I thought.) Of course, I’d caught him unawares. But I wasn’t looking for a carefully crafted answer – just a bit of help.

His first response was to speak of the power imbalance in blogging. He’s been burned by this. For me this issue speaks right to my Collection Development Librarian heart. In my constructs, he’s talking about the paucity of editorial control, where anyone can be a self-proclaimed expert. The way I have it figured, the savvy web user has worked out new ways to determine authority and worthiness. It’s fascinating that he instantly thought of blogging, which for me is just one small part of the Web, albeit astonishingly rich.

Then he gave me a more academic answer, mentioning a book we’d had a sermon on a few years ago: Small Pieces Loosely Joined by David Weinberger. Although I’d read the book back then, I’d forgotten about it. I don’t recall Weinberger talking about God, but the way he holds up the Web is indeed part of my search.

And then Rev. Luminous really hit it for me. He mentioned the theory that (as I understand it) God is what happens between you and me. While Martin Buber’s I and Thou is somewhere between difficult and impossible for me to grasp, nonetheless this helps. The Thou of the Web. It’s stupendous.

And it was such a delightful moment in time. The Rev. Luminous: comfortable with God, but reacting to the word Web. Me: comfortable with the Web, but reacting to the word God.