A TED talk by photographer Louie Schwartzberg, and a short film (exquisite) narrated by Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast. Watch and open your life to Life, experience the truth that "Today is a gift that was given to you, and the only appropriate response is gratitude." See the world again through the eyes of a child and an elderly man.
Feeling out of balance? What to do about it . . .
I read recently of an eighteen year old Taiwanese man who collapsed after forty hours of non-stop internet gaming. He apparently died from a blood clot after sitting too long without a break. Christians have a word for this simple act of break-taking. It's called "Sabbath". But it's gone out of style.
We're just too busy.
There's too much to do, too many texts.
There's the newsfeed on your Facebook page you've got to keep up with.
I'm not suggesting some return to a bygone legalism where people were forced to practice the Sabbath each Sunday. But I am suggesting that we take seriously the natural rhythms that are part of nature when its not paved over by modern technology, when our lives aren't so harassed and harried by an endless web of wireless connectivity. I want us to take these natural rhythms seriously because I visit with so many people who feel out of balance, strangers to themselves and others--people who feel over-crowded, over-stressed, and under-nourished by the simple things in life that create beauty, meaning, and pleasure.
"Remember the sabbath day," says God, "and keep it holy" (Exodus 20.8). The commandment wasn't a suggestion. It's a commandment because human beings need a break.
Intention: Today, I'll take a break. I'll step away from my computer and talk to a coworker. I'll turn off the music while driving (silence my cell phone too), and just be where I am...driving. I'll avoid watching TV or surfing the web just before bed, and walk outside and look at the stars.
Disconnect to Connect a video meditation
Have we lost something important about being human?
Life has rhythms that make sense to follow. There's the daily rhythm shaped around night and day. There's the weekly rhythm, the monthly rhythm. There are seasonal rhythms too. Schools shape our rhythms. So do business cycles. But sometimes these rhythms get blurred. The electric lightbulb has made it possible for people to ignore the enforced rhythm night once brought upon us. We can now work 24/7. And while seasonal rhythms still affect us, heating and air-conditioning have made it so that we feel these changes less than our great grandparents once did. Not having to go to bed at dusk because there's nothing else you can do comes with great benefits. You can read a book, post something on Facebook, see a movie, drive a car. And who among us wants to feel the lethargy or even danger we'd feel if we could find no air-conditioned break from a stretch of 108 degree August weather?
But I wonder if we've not lost something important about being human when we find ourselves distanced from the natural rhythms that would shape our lives if we had no modern technology.
Look, I'm not suggesting we become Luddites--those nineteenth century British textile artisans, who, sensing the massive changes coming toward them at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, destroyed the new power looms that were displacing skilled human labor with time saving machinery. No, I have great affection for so much that technology brings into our lives to join them.
I am wondering, though, if learning to create some space between ourselves and our devices might bring more balance, pleasure, and beauty into our over-crowded, overly stressed lives. When you've got virtually instant access to a vast global library of everything under the sun, and when you are accessible through your laptop, tablet, or smartphone, 24/7, to anyone wanting to text you, email you, or instant chat from anywhere in the world, something's got to happen to your soul. You lack the natural rhythms that create healthful boundaries and structures for human life.
Intention: Today, I'll take a more critical and suspicious posture to my devices. Grateful for them in so many ways, I won't let them blind me to the fact that they can use me rather than me using them. I'll create some period during the day when I'm not accessible to anyone or anything that's not actually in front of me. I'll unplug and begin to regain the more natural rhythms that can heal my soul.
Faith needs room for the struggle to believe
Christian Wiman is a poet whose prose has grabbed my attention. Having grown up in west Texas, where he never knew a non-Christian until he went to college, Wiman, walked away from his Christian faith, from any faith, until recently. In his most recent book, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, Wiman writes raw and articulately about faith. He's not a conventional Christian. He struggles to believe. He bangs against orthodoxy. But he can't shake that "insistent, persistent ghost". Here's a passage that names what many today feel, those who find it hard to believe in God, yet struggle more to not believe:
". . . nights all adagios and alcohol as my mind tore luxuriously into itself. I can see now how deeply God's absence affected my unconscious life, how under me always there was this long fall that pride and fear and self-love at once protected me from and subject me to. Was the fall into belief or into unbelief? Both. For if grace woke me to God's presence in the world and in my heart, it also woke me to his absence. I never truly felt the pain of unbelief until I began to believe."
Does belief pain you? Do doubts persist? Questions nag?
If so, you're not alone. Authentic faith has room for such a struggle. It needs room for that struggle if faith is to be real in times as troubles as these.
Intention: Today, I'll mindfully hold two things within my heart--my belief in God and my struggle to believe. That honest tension creates the inner space of true prayer.