When I started out as a Social Worker twenty years ago we had one desktop computer between ten of us. We shared a mobile phone which was reserved as a safety device for when we had to visit the home of someone potentially violent. When you left the office for a home visit you were gone – unavailable! When I left six years ago everyone had a smartphone and at least one computer. I was always contactable and my manager questioned when you weren't. All these devices seemingly for the purpose of making me more efficient, mobile, and constantly 'in sync'.
In my private life, I often find myself a willing participant in this drive for connection. How easy it is to begin my day logging onto my social media account as if the world existed in the sphere of Twitter or Facebook. How habitually at Breakfast I flick on the radio as well as the toaster and mindlessly consume both food and information.
Life moves at a staggering pace. We live in an age of acceleration and instantaneous. We are becoming conditioned to expect the quick, speedy, and instant and we are in grave danger of losing our ability to be still and wait. As T.S. Eliot puts it in his poem Burnt Norton we are 'distracted from distraction by distraction.
The IT revolution was sold to us on the premise that it would simplify our lives, if anything it has made it more complex. Yes, we have become increasingly connected but we waste a lot of time. In 2019 The Guardian reported how the average person spends over three hours on their phones every day and picks it up 58 times a day. During the lockdown, these figures went through the roof.
When I meet people and ask them how they are they often say 'fine, good......but busy.' There is an assumption being busy is the norm. That being busy is somehow noble and righteous. In my work as a Spiritual Director,, people readily admit that they want to pray but they can't find the space and time. People often feel they didn't have a choice about getting into this overactive, pathological busy state yet when you break it down with them the reality is that they actively choose this lifestyle. It can be so destructive as it can cut off our vital connection to God causing what Ronald Rolheiser calls spiritual oblivion.
Michael Zigarelli conducted research entitled Distracted from God in which he identified busyness as the major distraction from spiritual life. He argued that (1) Christians are assimilating to a culture of busyness, hurry and overload, which leads to (2) God becoming more marginalised in Christian's lives, which leads to (3) a deteriorating relationship with God, which leads to (4) Christian's becoming even more vulnerable to the 'worlds assumptions' about how to live, which leads to (5) more conformity to a culture of busyness, hurry, and overload. And then the cycle begins again.
In the story of creation in the Judeo-Christian tradition we are reminded of the importance of deliberate pausing as well as work. Composers know that what makes great music is the silence and the pauses between the notes.
Japanese theologian, Kosuke Koyama in his book Three Mile an Hour God, notes that the average speed that human beings walk at is three miles per hour. Jesus, who is God, walked at three miles per hour. God, who is love, walks at three miles per hour. Love has a speed, Koyama says, and that speed is slow. That speed is gentle. That speed is tender. To walk well with Jesus we must slow down to a more manageable and enjoyable pace.
In a fast-paced lifestyle - paying attention to God's personal communication with us is no easy task. In a fast-paced lifestyle - paying attention to God's personal communication with us is no easy task. Only by entering into the quiet and alone can we expect to encounter God.
Can we take up the invitation of Psalm 46 to simply 'be still and know that I am God'?
Yorumlar