For a new media journalist, I was pretty damned skeptical of the digital world Second Life. I was one of those who called it a video game (if you’re a new media geek, your hand is probably covering your dropped jaw right about now).

Well, I still don’t think it’s the most ethical of platforms to display journalism, but through my summer religion reporting fellowship, we decided to experiment with it. Multimedia extraordinaire and tech-geek Kara Andrade headed up the project. She produced a panel discussion about faith practices in the virtual world. Avatars were invited to cruise around the tent city we created to show off our religion-oriented stories. My tent, “Plural Living, God Willing,” resembled more of a mosque than a movie theatre mainly because we were holding content so as not to get scooped.

So, despite my initial grumblings about the projet, I wrote about my encounter with one of the avatars in the “Plural Living, God Willing” tent. It reads like a conversation, and if you continue reading on the “Faces of Faith” page, be sure to turn on the virtual soundtrack:

After the panel discussion and a little celebration on the dance floor, I retreated to the “Plural Living, God Willing” tent for a little alone time. I wanted to see if any participants were milling about ripe with questions about Islam and polygamy. Instead, I found Germi Runo in front of the tent pointing a long gun at me. It instantly turned into a sword, which swooped towards ClayW Winkler’s head, shaped like a fox.

“PB: what are you doing there?
PB: what is that gun?”…

read the rest of the story here.