Zankisha
The other day I got an e-mail from a SL resident inviting me to take a survey. So I finally had a chance today to log on and check it out. I had a notecard with a teleport address, so I went there. I clicked on the survey board, but it didn't work. Maybe you had to take the survey right away. Too bad, since I could have earned L$400 for doing it.
But I was on the site, so I figured I would poke around some more. I did a search for places with the word "church." There was a church of Satan and some of the fundamentalist churches I'd seen before. But this time I also saw the Koinonia United Church of Christ, so I decided to pay them a visit.
They had a great looking place and I was just about to go in and look around (I don't even know where they're located in real life) when another avatar named Zankisha appeared. She had some very familiar looking hair and clothes--obviously she had started with the same City Chic prototype that I had--but she had also added large, black wings.
I opened the chat window and told her I recognized the hair. She laughed and we began a conversation. She's a Canadian from British Columbia and headed to college for the first time in a few weeks. Since she was going off to college her dad got her a new computer so now she had the graphics card to do Second Life. She was, as I guessed, new to SL. She turned 18 in June.
Since we were the only two people at the Koinonia UCC, I asked her what brought her to the church. She said she thought it was a restaurant from the look of the building. I told her she would only get bread and grape juice here, and she laughed. She had wandered over from another island that adjoined the one the church was on.
I asked why she joined Second Life. She said she was a lesbian and was looking for a safe community. I told her she had come to a GLBT friendly church. She said the island that adjoined the one the church was on was not friendly. She thought it was odd that opposite attitudes were right next to each other. I said that maybe the UCC had set up there on purpose to provide a safe haven where there wasn't one. We chatted for quite awhile just about things in general and ended up marking each other as friends.
My encounter with this young woman made me all the more determined that the Massachusetts Bible Society should add yet one more friendly place for Zankisha on SL. And it made me sad that we live in a world, even in Canada, where some people only feel safe in a virtual world.
As my colleagues debate whether virtual worlds are helpful, it seems to me that the most helpful thing is for more kind people to inhabit them and provide safety in the same way that we try to be there for folks in the real world. At the same time that I'm exploring Second Life, I'm a Night Elf Druid in World of Warcraft. (WoW players, look for Anfyral in Zangarmarsh--level 20 and counting!) There's a young teen from the Bronx who looks for me whenever he is online to group with him and to go on quests together. He sent me mail on WoW saying that I was his best friend. I help him level up, wait through the computer trials as he tries to play a game like that on a dial-up computer, and make him good armor with my leatherworking skills. He has no idea he's playing with a 48-year-old woman who heads up a Bible Society, but probably his parents would be relieved to know the true identity of the Druid guarding their son.
Call me crazy, but I think it's possible to have the virtual Body of Christ.
But I was on the site, so I figured I would poke around some more. I did a search for places with the word "church." There was a church of Satan and some of the fundamentalist churches I'd seen before. But this time I also saw the Koinonia United Church of Christ, so I decided to pay them a visit.
They had a great looking place and I was just about to go in and look around (I don't even know where they're located in real life) when another avatar named Zankisha appeared. She had some very familiar looking hair and clothes--obviously she had started with the same City Chic prototype that I had--but she had also added large, black wings.
I opened the chat window and told her I recognized the hair. She laughed and we began a conversation. She's a Canadian from British Columbia and headed to college for the first time in a few weeks. Since she was going off to college her dad got her a new computer so now she had the graphics card to do Second Life. She was, as I guessed, new to SL. She turned 18 in June.
Since we were the only two people at the Koinonia UCC, I asked her what brought her to the church. She said she thought it was a restaurant from the look of the building. I told her she would only get bread and grape juice here, and she laughed. She had wandered over from another island that adjoined the one the church was on.
I asked why she joined Second Life. She said she was a lesbian and was looking for a safe community. I told her she had come to a GLBT friendly church. She said the island that adjoined the one the church was on was not friendly. She thought it was odd that opposite attitudes were right next to each other. I said that maybe the UCC had set up there on purpose to provide a safe haven where there wasn't one. We chatted for quite awhile just about things in general and ended up marking each other as friends.
My encounter with this young woman made me all the more determined that the Massachusetts Bible Society should add yet one more friendly place for Zankisha on SL. And it made me sad that we live in a world, even in Canada, where some people only feel safe in a virtual world.
As my colleagues debate whether virtual worlds are helpful, it seems to me that the most helpful thing is for more kind people to inhabit them and provide safety in the same way that we try to be there for folks in the real world. At the same time that I'm exploring Second Life, I'm a Night Elf Druid in World of Warcraft. (WoW players, look for Anfyral in Zangarmarsh--level 20 and counting!) There's a young teen from the Bronx who looks for me whenever he is online to group with him and to go on quests together. He sent me mail on WoW saying that I was his best friend. I help him level up, wait through the computer trials as he tries to play a game like that on a dial-up computer, and make him good armor with my leatherworking skills. He has no idea he's playing with a 48-year-old woman who heads up a Bible Society, but probably his parents would be relieved to know the true identity of the Druid guarding their son.
Call me crazy, but I think it's possible to have the virtual Body of Christ.
posted by Anne Robertson at
3:49 PM
3 Comments
