I want the world’s most perfect OS,
a stable one that has no vulnerabilities.
the human system is working its way there,
our perfect righteousness already installed
but our sin continuously competing
for computing cycles.
yet we have a good designer
continuously patching and patching and patching
until one day (trumpets.wav) it is made stable
with a final great push,
no more attacks can be levied,
the viruses are all defeated,
and then we can go further up and further in,
with no more worries about firewalls

Moral development is a firewall:
a set of techniques that check viruses when they arise.

Spiritual development is a new operating system:
a new person who operates differently,
through fear and trembling
away from the sword of fire
toward the garden city
transforming
bit by bit
into what viruses cannot touch

Back in the day, 
someone created a Facebook page for God. 
You could friend (someone speaking for) God, 
and (someone speaking for) God could roast you.

Maybe the page is actually God speaking,
calling us to attention 
on what we want out of a god,
the god of our own era,
insulting and berating us
for the lols

Webmaster, webmaster,
called upon in great distress,
when an error appears,
when it doesn’t work like it should,
and we won’t read the manual.

oh technical, oh technical
those things we don’t want
to spend our bandwidth on.
We’d rather have someone
at our disposal than grow,
and learn, and remember.
For who can be bothered?
(Yet you told us how,
and we are so stubborn.)

webmaster, webmaster
I’m sure it hurts when
we don’t know the basics
but you never tire of us.
the job is never done.
between us and spiders,
you watch the webmakers,
and care for every one.

We like to note that we upload 100 hours of video to YouTube
every minute of every hour of every day.
We’re a visual culture, we say,
as if we were the first culture clamoring for visual content.
We looked for a sign before video.

Lord, would you let yourself be called “hacker”?
Would you let me call you hacker if it helped me
to think of you as someone who is always tinkering
always refining, always making more
always doing for the sake of doing, the joy of it.
Did you hack the world into existence?

or are you already disappointed that I would
ascribe these qualities to people who steal and
purposefully seek the worst for people?
(Are you worried that I am extending this
ambiguity to you? Can you worry?)
Are you sad that I want to find the kernel
of good that lies in hacking?

or are you also looking for the good
in all of us, ferocious or fumbling,
redeeming all our titles, giving mercy
to prostitutes and thieves and robbers
and hackers?

Lord, Lord
I am tired of Facebook notifications.
I can block the incessant evil by closing the page
Or deleting my account.
But you have all your notifications on and never close the page.

You bear our incessant evil, as you have been doing all this time.

You must long for completion, for no more notification of evil or hurt or foolishness.

I know I do.

Lord, you were in the business of followers:
Follow me, you said.
And so many did: thousands,
tens of thousands,
followed you around from place to place,
even beat you to the spot so they’d be ready
when you arrived.

But, alas, they all unfollowed you.

Even your core audience abandoned the thread during your crisis,
leaving you with only one lurker, to whom you sent a direct message,
behold, your mother (even your mother followed you).

But the unfollowers:
they wanted something else of you
they wanted the tweet;
you offered the universe.

Imager, imager,
Send us a new image.
Give us a sign.
Show us you’re still working.

But no new image is forthcoming,
because we are the picture you’re drawing.

Lord, PDFs are hard to work with:
unchangeable, unmovable.

What we want comes with what we don’t.
We want to delete and revise what is sent to us.

But all we can do is comment on the document,
and nothing our comments do change it.
But we never stop commenting anyway.