The WWDC is the annual conference (i.e. pep rally, cult gathering) when Steve Jobs announces the latest and greatest “You Must Own This If You Ever Hope to Have a Fulfilling Life” Apple product and this year’s star of the show, the iPhone4, didn’t fail to impress. Front and back camera with flash. HD video recording. iMovie installed. Video chat. App folders. Multi-tasking. Gyroscope. Faster speed, longer battery life, higher resolution.

Wait. I need a minute.

Sorry. It’s just so hard for me to see the computer screen with misty-eyes.

Oh, I can hear you now. No seriously I can. I can hear you, and what I hear you saying with an ever-so slightly edgy tone in your voice (don’t even try to deny it!) is this… “So what does your pathetic obsession with all things iGadgety have to do with God or faith or being a Christian Lesbian?”

Fine. Mock me now but in a minute you’re going to regret prematurely jumping all over my little pony and doubting me. But I, being gracious and good, will forgive you. In fact, consider it already done. Absolution is yours my Sister.

So here’s where I was heading if you would have just given me the benefit of the doubt…

A traditional happening and mega-highlight of Steve’s keynote speech is the moment when he whips out the soon to be released device of the hour and gives a live demo of it’s new features. Usually, the demo comes off without a hitch. Until this year. It was the most perfectly awkward technological glitchy moment I’ve ever seen at a WWDC.

It went something like this. In preparing to live demo the new bust-an-eyeball resolution of the new iPhone4 Steve went to open up the same web page on both an iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 so a side by side comparison could be projected up onto the massive stage screen, but instead what he got were two side by side images of web browsers unable to make a connection due to the number of attendees in the audience who were overloading the auditorium WiFi with all their real-time blogging, facebooking and tweeting. The only way Steve was eventually able to get access to the internet and continue the demo was to plead with the audience to turn off their WiFi-run equipment so he could get a solid connection. Essentially he told them to all shut up and shut down.

How often have we experienced something similar in our own lives when all we want is to make a clear connection with God so that we can know, really know, what God is saying to us but it seems we can’t get through. I don’t know what God wants me to do. I keep waiting for God to say something but I’m not hearing God say anything. I feel like I’m not able to connect with God anymore. Others have no problem speaking for God about my life but everyone is saying something different and besides, I don’t want others to tell me what God is saying; *I want to hear God speak.

It seems the biggest hindrance at one time or another for many of us in hearing from God was due to the interference coming from everyone else. How could we ever hope to connect directly with God when everyone else was blogging, facebooking, tweeting, preaching, counseling, advising and blathering on and on about what they knew God was really saying to us. Voices of condemnation. Voices of consolation. Voices calling us to repentance. Voices calling us to acceptance. Voices telling us God disapproved of who we were and what we were doing. Voices telling us God loved us just as we were. So many voices coming from so many directions that even when we heard a faint intimate whisper of God breaking through to our soul we doubted it because of the sheer number and volume of other the voices coming at us. Our connection seemed weaker than everyone else’s because while we questioned and wondered and struggled, they all seemed so certain. So absolute.

Steve pleaded with the crowd to shut things down on their end so he could get a solid connection and sometimes we need to do the same thing but rather than leaving the action to others we take action to limit how much we’ll take in from outside ourselves so we can listen to what’s being said within. That’s what it took for me in reconciling my faith and sexuality. I put aside all the gay-affirming books and all the ex-gay books. I put aside the theological arguments and biblical interpretations. I stopped looking to others to tell me what was right and what path God would have me walk. I gathered all the information. I did the legwork and the research. I studied and observed and explored. Then I put it aside to be alone with God, to hear from God, to be led by God.

Here’s the thing we need to realize. Our connection with God is never broken. God is always in dialogue with us, Spirit speaking to spirit. God is only silent when we need to be in silence with God. Can you trust that? If you sign off from all the others voices, including mine, that might presume in anyway to know what’s true for you in your personal relationship with God can you trust that God will be faithful to speak to you and that you will be faithful to listen and respond to God’s calling?

I know I’ve said this all before but when I was reminded it of again in such a perfect little moment at the WWDC, I couldn’t help but circle the wagons around it one more time. Trust God. Trust yourself. And for the time being and for as long as you need, tell the rest of us to shut down and sign off.

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*I’m going to assume we’re all on the same page that when we talk about God speaking to us we’re not referring to an audible voice but rather an inner knowing, a feeling, a sense, a nudge. We hear God speaking to us within the words of Scripture. We hear God speak to us in an encounter with someone else or in an experience that plays out in an ordinary day. However it is that you hear God speak to you, that’s what I’m talking about.

And so for the past two hours I’ve been contently sitting here at Starbucks tapping lightly on my glistening little tech toy on my post Sin, Salvation and a Savior when….taking a deep cleansing breathe….the internet connection dropped and everything was lost into the irretrievable abyss of thin air. Don’t ask for the details of how such a thing could have happened. Any answer I could give would be rated R for strong language and violence.

And here I was, blogging just the other day that I didn’t believe in hell. Sigh.

It seems apparent that iPaininthebutt and I need a little time of separation from each other for the ongoing health of our relationship which means today’s intended post probably won’t be happening. I apologize for that because I know the past two weeks have been a blog black hole around here while I’ve been catching back up on life (i.e. washing, dusting, scrubbing the toilet bowl, making undistracted eye contact with my wife…) following the joyful chaos of Lent and Easter.

Expect a new post on Monday however there’s a chance that if iPaddy behaves we could put our differences behind us and try again later today, and letting me win just one game of Scrabble would be a good start on the road to reconciliation. I’m just saying.

And so I signed back on yesterday evening after my little 48 internet lapse to write a blog post only to find. . .

• 64 personal emails, not including the Viagra hucksters, the generous son of a deceased Abidjan prince who hopes to share his 4.7 million dollar inheritance with me, and the woman who can’t seem to imagine anyone would pass on her offer of free porno downloads.
• 365 new updates to my RSS feed
• 200 plus Twitter Tweets
• 22 registration applications for the message forum
• 5 blog comments waiting approval
• a non-ending stream of Facebook status updates
• and no matter how hard I try to resist, I can’t help but sing “and a partridge in a pear tree.”

After responding to the emails, making a fleeting scan of the feeds and tweets, approving blog comments, accepting forum memberships, and checking on the highlights of the past two days in my Facebook friends lives, I signed off line as the clock neared midnight sans blog post.

For all the added distraction and stimulation the internet has brought into my life I continue to be grateful for the technological wonder that has allowed  me to connect with others in ways that at times feel no less real or meaningful than intimate conversations shared in a quiet corner of a neighborhood coffee shop. Every time an email arrives from an unknown address and I open it to discover another poignant story of someone coming out as a gay Christian my eyes inevitably start stinging with tears, and I can’t help but wonder where so many of us who are wildly in love with God and absolutely queer would be in our lives were it not for the connections we found online? Neither can I imagine how much more painful, lonely and long my own journey would have been had I not found encouragement and hope online from strangers, now friends, who were walking the very same path in Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Australia, Spain, Tennessee…

Have I wasted hours of my life rambling aimlessly around the internet when I could have been engaged in the world outside my door? Sure, that’s a no-brainer.  The internet is at times just one more bright and shiny object vying for attention in our lives but most of the time, the time that really matters, it’s where we share bits of ourselves with one another and experience genuine affection, concern, and community with others we would never have encountered in our lives were it not for this incredibly brilliant merging of human technology and Divine Spirit.

I’m as in awe of it today as I was back in 1992 when I was clunking around in the cyber world of black screens and Compuserve at a snail-staggering dial-up modem speed of 2400 baud. I’m grateful for the technology. I’m grateful for the human connections. Most of all, I’m grateful for the chance to get to know you. I really am.

So I’m curious.

• When did you first sign onto the internet? What service did you use?
• How many hours a week do you think you spend online outside of work?
• What do you like most about the internet?
• What do you like least about the internet?

Another suggestion would be that if you come to the site in the future and get a message that the site is unavailable or the status indicator continues to spin endlessly and the site doesn’t appear, go to DreamHost Status to confirm a system outage or any maintenance downtime. Most interruptions to the site only last from a few minutes to a couple hours.

Just wanted you to know to avoid the masses (all seven of you) from going wild in the streets!