According to Reuters an Indian bridegroom had to take his wedding vows by mobile phone when floods preventing him reaching the location of the ceremony.

So what are the issues around technology and proximity? In the 1990s I once heard the Revd Dr Phil Meadows argue that there was little difference between communicating certain things via virtual reality and mediating them through other, older, more socially acceptable technologies such as hearing aids. (And what about spectacles?) Earlier than that, in the 1980s, when Ship Of Fools was an ordinary magazine made of paper, they reported on the case in the USA (where else?) of the Roman Catholic ‘drive-in confessional’, with the slogan, ‘Toot and tell or go to hell.’

So how close do we have to be to someone for it to be personal? Conversely, how far away do we have to be from someone to break the sense of personal connection? What barriers are acceptable, because we don’t perceive them so much a barriers as mediators? Theologically, what constitutes community and incarnation?