Place Matters

One of my favorite memories that could only have happened during covid was logging into one of my college fellowship’s worship services from the middle of the desert. Using my phone’s WiFi hotspot and Zoom I was able to laugh and sing and listen to a pastor friend preaching from California to students in Massachusetts while the sun went down over the canyons and juniper trees of northwest Colorado. It was ridiculous and the sound was disjointed, but it was wonderful to hear my friends’ voices and to share that time with them, even if only briefly and from thousands of miles away.

Then I clicked to leave the meeting, and everyone was gone, and the silence and emptiness of the desert came rushing back in around me. 

Something missing 

Virtual technologies have been incredibly helpful in the past two years when nearly all of us were unable to interact with friends and loved ones in person. We were able to FaceTime with family members in other countries when international travel shut down. Conferences and board meetings moved to Zoom meant parents had more time to spend at home with their kids. Thanks to live streaming services, I was even able to attend church in Boston virtually while out West. 

At this point some may wonder if we could just do without in-person connections. But while it is wonderful to hear someone’s voice over the phone, and even more so to see their face on a screen, there is something incomplete about these interactions. Something is missing, and that something is the intimacy that is only possible in the real, physical presence of another person.

Real physical presence is both costly and difficult. It demands the sacrifice of being somewhere else or doing other things, and requires a higher input of energy and planning to actually get one’s whole self somewhere, rather than to simply log in or dial up. Technologies like social media or the metaverse, which allow us to communicate with one another virtually, make our interactions more convenient by reducing these inherent costs of having physical bodies in physical places. But real, physical human presence in all its complexity and for all its costliness is necessary for the sort of intimacy that we were made to enjoy and that we deeply desire. 

This is something that we’ve known empirically for quite some time.  Research conducted years before the pandemic showed that full-time remote work led to significant increases in loneliness relative to working in an office.  The early research conducted since the onset of covid - a massive, unplanned experiment on what happens when large swathes of the population take their work online - confirm that online social interactions are no substitute for the real thing.

But we don’t need theoretical arguments or mountains of data to prove this. All we really need is the reminder of meeting an old friend again at the airport for the first time in years, and the hug, the laughter, the arm around our shoulders. These all communicate without speaking the simple reality of another person who has chosen to give up many possibilities to be present, who is willing to make the time and space to be with us in this moment, who can’t be muted or made to disappear with a click. And the love expressed in all of those small and often unnoticed details is something powerful and precious that the past two years have shown us we cannot truly do without.

Embodying human flourishing

As Octet has been considering how best to realize our vision of human flourishing at MIT, we have gathered often to pray, discuss, and plan with our partners and advisers from every level of the university. In those conversations and meetings, two things in particular have stood out: an excitement among participants at the diversity of the community in attendance, and a desire for the intimacy and community of in-person interactions. As students, alumni, faculty, and staff have all come together across the lines that typically divide the university’s population to share in casting a vision for MIT’s Christian community as a whole, we have wondered how much more vibrant and wonderful such a community would be if we could be together in-person.

Through this process of prayer and discussion, God has continued to bring to the forefront of our attention the idea of establishing the Octet Collaborative as a physical presence on MIT’s campus. Imagine a space that would be open to the whole community, and designed with areas for sharing in common life and collaborative work–including offices, workrooms, a cafe, and library, as well as residences for a couple of graduate student fellows. Imagine a place, not only for a Christian voice to be heard, but for embodied Christian life to be shared in community.

This center would serve as a gathering place for the many fellowships and groups that make up the Christian community at MIT, and for Christians at MIT to offer to the Institute. It would be a crossroads where people often divided as undergraduates, janitors, support service staff, professors, and post-docs, could come together to enjoy the irreplaceable experience of working, studying, feasting, and simply living in one another’s presence.  The Octet Collaborative is dedicated to human flourishing at MIT. Convinced that our bodies are essential to what it means to be human by the incarnate life of our Lord Jesus Christ - the Word made flesh who came and lived among us - we also believe that our embodied presence together is vital to what it means for us to flourish.

Nothing like the real thing

For now, the work of the Octet Collaborative takes place spread out across MIT’s campus, and often virtually, and God has graciously provided opportunities to serve Him in this way over the past two years.  But just imagine a physical, embodied center that Octet and the Christian community at MIT can call home, and offer hospitality and presence to everyone connected to the Institute.  There’s nothing like the real thing!  Would you join us in prayer, that it would be a reality someday soon?