November 7th: At the risk of being too gushy — or wordy — today I am grateful for friendship and for the role of social media, particularly Facebook. I know FB has its many faults and those anger me along with the rest of you, but hear me out. While FB hasn’t done much for political discourse, except maybe to erode and destroy civility, it has been a blessing for my friendships — and maybe yours, too.

Some of my Facebook friends have been around forever, without much of a lapse in time or space — they are my forever treasures. Some of them I see daily and FB is like a punctuation mark on our days.  Some — many, actually — live in far away places and FB allows me to peek occasionally into their lives and to know that they are well.  My heart loves that.

There are some whose friendships have reconnected after years, sometimes decades, and those are such a blessing.  Those friends can say they “knew me when” and we were lucky enough to share a piece of our growing up.  We are like mirrors to each other’s younger selves, even while sharing bits and pieces of our now adult lives. How lucky is that? Imagine my surprise when my BFF from fifth grade found me on line.  We finally met over coffee while I was traveling back to my old hometown and we giggled, just like old times. Facebook makes stuff like that happen.  Like a tiny miracle.

I am also so grateful for those friendships that I’ve made through Facebook, with people who don’t necessarily travel in the same spheres (or time zones) as I do, who have differing views of the world, and who’ve sometimes been brave enough to have tough conversations over ideology, politics, religion — you know, the subjects that so many consider taboo but are subjects we need to talk about and explore if we are going to build communities we can depend on. One day, I hope I can meet each of these friends, face-to-face, over coffee and a danish, because something sweet would be good.

Finally, I am thankful for this space . . . this tiny little blog (and WordPress) where I have met and chatted with people from around the world.  That you peek in from time to time, let me know what you’re thinking, is so so good. I am also grateful for your blogs — the poetry, photography, essays you’ve shared with the blogosphere.  You open my eyes every single time.