September, 2013 My family and I were driving to the zoo in Seattle, where we were to meet our friends. At a crucial point, it dawned on us that the path to the zoo was not as direct as it appeared on the map. Irritation rose. The accusations and innuendo started back and forth, mostly from me. Feelings were hurt, and when we finally found our way to the right gate to the zoo, we had to quickly make amends, become friends again, and stop the kids from crying before we met up with our other party. Our friends were there at the appointed place, patiently waiting, and relieved to see us. After I apologized and related our misadventures with one-way streets, etc., Bob shrugged it off, explaining that he just follows his GPS so he doesn’t have to worry about it. Fiona interjected, somewhat exasperatedly, “I would have liked to phone you guys, but...” and the unfinished sentence was “you don’t have a cell!” I’ve heard it many times: “You don’t have a cell? Oh.... If you just had a cell...” Such a lack has become insane, it seems. My unspoken thought is, “What’s the alarm? So we had a moment when we didn’t have all the intel about what was happening – the way transportation and communication has been for thousands of years – full of gaps.” Later, I had a chance to consider what we lost by not having GPS or a cell and compare that to what we would have lost by having these gadgets. In spite of the obvious convenience gained in this situation by using a smart phone with GPS, I’m happy we didn’t have them. For one thing, it may just be the male in me, but I resist the blind following after GPS commands. I like maps and finding my way. GPS requires almost no participation on my part, no preparation and understanding of the lay of the land. It eliminates the need to know the neighborhood and the various oddities and unique features of the street grid. And if I’d been using GPS, I’d have missed out on a deeper appreciation of the area that I gained by backtracking and circling the neighborhood. I think people would experience a greater personal connection to their places without the “connections” of smart devices. This may sound too subtle to be important, or even a little pathetic, but I’m more human for doing it the old way, and I believe we all would be more human without smart phones and GPS. Allow me another observation to explain why. Because we did not have the convenience of these gadgets, I'm more connected to my wife. We may have been ready to join the zoo ourselves by the time we got there, but I do believe we gained some valuable self-discovery by having to work with only what we had – each other and our instincts – and figure it out while dealing with our little on-road conflict. I hear the other husbands, “Fool! Take the GPS, dude!” Yep, in the short run this certainly would have saved us some grief. But that savings is minimal compared to the greater understanding we now have of each other’s strengths, weaknesses, and sensitivities. I now know, for example, I’ll think twice about criticizing my wife about directions after messing up myself, and I’ll appreciate more her intuitive approach to finding one’s way. I’ll be more ready to put my ego in check. I also know better about when I have to be most on guard against irritation and anger. We’ve gained another step on a more important road to acceptance and conflict management. Hopefully, these insights will spill over into other areas of our relationship. An epilogue to the above story: On the way driving back from the zoo, we were rear-ended by someone who was apparently texting while driving. No, I didn’t lecture the other driver. The evidence already said much more than I could. I have two pre-school aged kids, and I wonder how to help them through the choices they’ll face with the waves of ever new smart gadgetry? On the playground one day I noticed all the play had stopped and a bunch of kids, including my girls, were huddled around a four-year-old boy enjoying a game app on a smart gadget. My heart sank as my girls’ eyes widened and demanded that they get one too. I broke up the huddle and told the kids this was a playground and pointed them to the slides and swings. I’m not sure what the parents watching thought of my actions, but I hope it was taken well. As smart gadgets make new inroads into our lives with their dazzling attractions, what will happen to creative play and what we used to call “physical education”? How will I encourage my kid’s physical, emotional, social and intellectual development as they face the challenges of smart technology? How will we protect and nurture what is uniquely human in us?
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September, 2013 It's time we got smart about the proliferation of personal gadgets referred to as "smart." Let’s consider the possibility that these mobile smart devices – phones, tablets, watches, etc – are actually making us dumber. I realize this argument is a tough sell. Most of us, long ago, willingly succumbed to the seduction of smart gadgets. We’re quite comfortable with our smart phones by now, and frankly we’ve grown tone deaf to the cries of despair coming from the likes of me and thrown up our rigid defenses composed of forty characters or fewer. Could it be that we’ve fallen under the “smart spell” and are slowly growing brain dead? Before you yawn and roll your eyes, allow me a few practical examples to illustrate my point. As an English teacher, I’ve taken on the formidable task of training society’s future communicators. I’ve made a commitment to seeing students put together complete sentences, and from there, coherent paragraphs and beyond to sustained, coherent arguments of five hundred words or more. This is not an unreasonable goal, but for someone confronting a class whose normal mode of communication is fragments in texts or monosyllabic voice messages, this is a challenge. Going from “In society it difficult to work job @ place u lik” to “It’s becoming more difficult to work at a job you like in our society” is not a straightforward task. Also, the pressures to cheat can be unbearable for students who pin their future hopes on academic achievement. Smart phones have quickly become the preferred vehicle of plagiarism. I don’t suspect Steve Jobs ever imagined he’d created the ultimate cheating devices. For quizzes and exams, these palm held gadgets are easily concealed. In just one case, during an exam two of my students had neatly embedded smart phones in pencil cases, which gave them quick access with a few thumb clicks to the internet and vocabulary definitions and essay ideas. They felt they had no other recourse but to let smart tech think for them. My strong guess is this wasn’t their first time. Unfortunately, their addiction only made them dumber, both intellectually and ethically, and they failed the course for their little misdeed. You’ll argue, cheaters are like weeds, we’ll always have them. But I can’t remember when cheating was easier or more common. Not only do gadgets like smart phones make us worse users of language, but they are playing a big part in lowering our social and emotional intelligence. I’m not the first to suggest this by any means. Research bears this out. I recently witnessed a scene in the university halls that simply depressed me. A male student, obviously a bit nervous and trying to muster the courage and waiting for the right moment, finally approached a girl with her head buried in her smart phone and tapped her on the shoulder. “Hi, how’s it going,” he said, offering his best smile. No response. The girl was too busy checking her messages to even acknowledge him. Emboldened by his first step, our brave knight tried again. “Hi Stephanie.” Stephanie uttered a faint “hi” while continuing to work her thumbs with abandoned agility. She still hadn’t even bothered to take in who was standing in front of her. The boy patiently waited for her to finish, but after it became apparent Stephanie would be awhile, he simply walked away. I hurt for both of them. Is smart technology turning us into social nimrods? (Check your i-phone for the second or third definition. Not helping? Hmm.) Are we losing the ability to treat each other with respect, kindness, and common decency? I’m increasingly convinced that we are sacrificing our true humanity to smart gadget idols. It seems, with the rise of smart technology, social disabilities are also on the rise. It’s hard to believe we’re gaining more sophisticated levels of communication, as the claim goes, if we can’t even pass the test of basic social etiquette. How can anyone develop any degree of social or emotional literacy when we are increasingly shunning face to face relationships? Without the reflection of others, we cease to develop in these areas. By surrendering real human interaction to more time spent on our smart devices, how will we ever acquire skills like empathy and conflict resolution, or real love of any holistic kind? As much as we might attest to how much smarter and more functional we are because of this technology, the opposite is true. We are becoming enslaved in abusive relationships with smart gadgets, and we’re enabling them because we’ve convinced ourselves that we really do love them and can’t live without them. It shouldn’t be that difficult to negotiate some simple “terms of use” for holding off these negative impacts of this smart technology. In the college classroom, why not employ some basic rules like “turn off and stow away all smart gadgets, or leave the classroom”? And, with our smart-toting friends, a simple agreement to disable our smart gadgets while we’re with each other should be a simple choice. What a statement of the value of our friendships that would be! It’s time to recover our true humanity. August, 2013 Occasionally, I need to be put in my place again. It’s quiet at 7:30 a.m. The early sun is casting a yellow hue over the park on my way to work. A crow probes for breakfast in a bit of trash tossed to the gutter, and a woman in Capri’s crosses the street with her dog on a long leash. I don’t mind slowing down. It feels right. The normal work day angst has subsided this morning. Long shadows reach out as if summoning me. Suddenly I realize I’m overwhelmed with love for this place, and for my place in it. There’s a harmony with my environment I haven’t felt for a long time. Why is this happening? I got very little sleep last night, and normally that makes me grumpy. Clearly, the Spirit is at work here. The only thing different from other mornings was that I actually had twenty minutes with my wife over breakfast. We’re normally on different schedules, but today she was there offering me a fresh pastry for breakfast, joining with me, the news turned off, and neither of us checking email or watches. Just talking, whimsically and mundanely for the most part, but talking. About the day ahead; about an intriguing story we’d heard; about some pigeons she’d interrupted while they were “doing it” near the bakery. She felt bad about disturbing them, couldn’t get it out of her head, and wanted to tell me about it. We talked about repainting our drab living room walls. We had a minor disagreement about paint color, and then we kissed each other before I went out the door. Those twenty minutes together made for the most satisfying morning I’ve had for a long time. But there was nothing particularly earth-jarring about any of it. Except that we were actually relating, like we were made to do, instead of “connecting” without joining, “facebooking” (is that a verb now) without facing, and “friending” without befriending. How embarrassing that I have to actually remind myself of this most basic human reality, and that I find I need to tell you—that we were made to share our lives, starting with the most mundane parts of it, to be in physical contact, to be with one another. How odd to suddenly “get” this, but how simple and beautiful. These realizations hit me only after crossing the neighborhood on the way to work. It made me look at my turf with a fresher, more grateful awareness: the sunlight, the crow in the trash, the dog-walker and dog, and the shadows. Like falling in love for the first time, I felt reconciled again to my place after a long absence. We are creatures placed in a garden, in our various niches of that garden. People with people in our places, as one whole making up Creation. Separate from each other, we cannot be reconciled to our places, but when we are in love with each other, we can be in love with our environment. And love is not blind. Only in right relationship to each other do we see the world and each other clearly, with fresh eyes. Love does not mean that we view the world through rose tinted glasses any more than we see one anther that way. There is both realism and transcendence in this vision. Our best places are littered with garbage, and our best relationships are riddled with conflicts. But when love visits unexpectedly, we are enabled to receive each other and our places just as they are. It’s good to be put back in our places again. June, 2013 I’m sometimes asked why I write. Most artists ask themselves the same question, from time to time, about what they do. Really, why do we bother? It’s a pretty lonely and thankless job without many financial rewards. Obviously, there must be a higher purpose. You may have heard versions of these very insightful responses to the “why” question: “To bring order out of chaos.” “To try to make sense of the world I live in.” “I’m striving for truth and beauty.” “Because I have an urge to get my ideas out.” “It fulfills me.” “To communicate and share with a larger audience.” “To make the world a better place. It’s an act of love.” Any of these are fitting responses for why I write, whether it be fiction, non-fiction, poetry or drama. Most significantly, all of these responses express aspects of our creative nature as it reflects the image of God. And they offer insight into the heart of the Creator himself. For instance, according to the creation account in Genesis, when the world was without form, the Spirit worked to bring order out of chaos. One can also hear, as God looked upon all he had made, a sense of fulfillment in the statement, “It was very good.” Also, the writers of scripture, as they wrote, were making sense (God’s sense) out of the world they lived in. And undoubtedly, as with most artists, God’s interest was in not only his own enjoyment but the enjoyment of his audience, humankind and creation itself. Indeed, it was an act of love. At its heart, every creative act is a reflection of the nature of God. Granted, not everyone shares this perspective, but I would argue this reality is inferred nonetheless. I love Eric Liddell’s perspective when asked why he ran. He said, “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure.” His perspective brings our creative acts full circle back to their origin. Our creative activity, as a reflection of our Creator, is a form of praise, a response of celebration and delight in the way we are made and in the One who made us. But an artist knows that the creative process is also hard work, and sometimes it feels more like a headache than headway. It’s not without its sweat and tears – from the original chaos of ideas to the final form. It’s a messy business, and every artist comes away from their best work with their hands dirty. The same is true of God’s creative activity. In one of the most striking images in Scripture, when God creates man, we see God stooping down to form him out of the dirt, and when he is finished, he breaths into man’s nostrils the breath of life. Throughout the scriptures, God repeats this process over and over in various ways as he struggles to redeem his creation, which has become marred: gathering a people, setting boundaries, and letting go. As a writer, I feel this cycle of creation and recreation every time I gather ideas; set down characters, situations and scenarios; revise and prune; revise and prune, shaping everything with just the right words. God’s activity is also put down in words and is ultimately expressed in his final word, his son. As I sit in a very popular park in my hometown of Vancouver, BC, I’m struck by the care the team of gardeners put into the flower beds, trees, shrubs, and stonework, in season and out. My two girls (4 and 2) blonde, fair-skinned beauties, are wading in the pool below the fountain. Passing by are the hordes of tourists who regularly visit our town from overseas. About a dozen of them pause, lining up along the edge of the fountain, to capture the scene of my girls’ playing in photos and videos. My first instinct is to tell them off. How can they be so callous and disrespectful treating my girls like some exotic local wildlife? But then I realize that, in their own clumsy and imperfect ways, they also are seeking truth and beauty. They are following the human urge to live out the image of God, as unwitting as that may be. When we engage in any creative act in any kind of work or play, for better or worse, we are doing what we were meant to do: emulate our Creator. This is our work and our worship. April, 2013 I’m a bit of a hermit, and I have to admit I’m fine with that. Making the effort it takes to create strong community ties with my neighbors doesn’t come naturally to me. I like working alone, don’t normally befriend my workmates, and don’t much like the coffee cocktail hours after church. Party anyone? Nah. A real winner, eh? But a recent event in the news has made me think I’m actually in the majority of those who don’t really know their neighbors and don’t want to make the effort to. In Cleveland Ohio, three girls were kidnapped and held captive in the house of their kidnapper for a decade without anyone knowing. Family, friends and neighbors had occasionally visited the house while he was harboring his victims. They were all stunned when they learned the news of his heinous, detestable crime. They saw no clues, or simply ignored the clues. The man seemed “normal.” We ask, how is this possible? What really caught my attention about this story was the fact that several years before his arrest the kidnapper had written a letter which was essentially a confession and a desperate cry for rescue from his own tortured self. Instead of sharing the letter with someone, he kept it hidden in the house along with his victims. He had not only enslaved these women; he had enslaved himself behind a mask of normalcy rather than be known. So, beyond the unspeakable suffering of these three women is the added tragedy that no one knew the real heart of this man, and thus the demise of himself and his victims unfolded. The girls were rescued when a neighbor, a black man, heard a cry for help and kicked a hole in the door, a small portal to the secrets within, big enough for the captives to be set free. When interviewed, he said, “I knew something was wrong when a little white girl ran into a black man’s arms.” What a statement. If this is a shock to our society, yes, something definitely is wrong. This man’s words are haunting. They confront us with so many questions, among them the question once posed to Jesus: “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ answer, of course, is the parable of the Good Samaritan. This parable is often used to show that beyond caring for our own, we must care for those we least identify with, those we least like. Very true. The black man, who stepped out of the confines of race and rescued this girl while others chose not to intervene, is the classic example of the good Samaritan. But Jesus’ story is about more than crossing racial barriers. Take a closer at what the Samaritan actually did. He did not simply offer the wounded traveler perfunctory sympathies or write him a check. He stayed with him, bandaged his wounds, watched him through the night, paid all his expenses, and promised to check up on him. He took the man’s plight on his own shoulders. He “loved his neighbor as he loved himself,” which are Jesus’ words at the start of the story. So, these two stories – the good Samaritan and the rescue of the kidnapped girls in Cleveland – pose yet another angle on the question, “Who is my neighbor?” That is, “Who are you anyway? Do I really know you?” Nobody wanted to know the wounded traveler. Nobody really knew the kidnapper or the evil he hid in his heart. Are we really willing to get close enough to hear the pain in our neighbor's voice, feel his wounds and absorb them as our own? We too easily glide along in life, thinking we’ve “made contact” with a passing hello at work, a smile and a how-are-you-doing at church, a catchy update on our Facebook page, or a pithy blog post. But can we see these moments of contact as divine invitations, as potential portals opening to the soul of another and ourselves? Do we have the courage to disclose to each other our greatest pleasures and disappointments, our deepest joys as well as fears, our most commendable aspirations as well as our most vile thoughts. Yes, it could get messy, and it’s risky. But imagine being fully known and being accepted with open arms. I wonder what the outcome for those three women in Cleveland would be had the kidnapper’s family member, friend or neighbor taken the time to be a real neighbor to him. How would those girls’ lives be different? How would that man’s life be different? And I wonder for the rest of us what would happen if we really did pass through these portals and explore the question, “Who is my neighbor?” If we really did take the time to find out, what evil might we be averting unawares? What redemption might we be cultivating before evil can take a foothold? Captives are waiting to be set free within us and around us, perhaps right next door. April, 2013 When the news broke about the bomb at the Boston Marathon, most of us reacted, understandably and appropriately, with horror, grief, and anger. Some may have even cried instinctively, “Oh, the humanity!” a phrase made popular by the reporter who uttered these words after witnessing the explosion of the Hindenburg in 1937. Thirty-six died that day. Three dead and over 140 injured in Boston. We feel the humanity, i.e. the “masses” as well as the “compassion.” We are instantly connected to them and feel their pain. We share their suffering. We identify. Any feeling person is able to empathize with people caught in such tragedies. If we cannot, we should probably be reading the barometer of our moral and emotional sensitivities to see if something is broken and why. Unlike with the Hindenburg tragedy, in the Boston bombing there are other characters in the story besides the victims. There are the perpetrators bent on violence. So, on the flip side of our cries of grief, we also cry for justice to right the wrong, and this instinct also should assure us we are human. Some of us, also, may have uttered, “Oh, my God!” at the sight of this bombing. More than cursing, such a cry is possibly the most appropriate of all because, in essence, it embraces both the feelings of humanity, grief mixed with anger, and a belief in the only One who could possibly make sense out of this horror or offer a proper response. God’s incarnation in Jesus tells us he identifies with us in our suffering. Jesus is also God’s response to the cries for justice as he comes not only as savior but as judge. “Vengeance is mine,” says God. So, when we genuinely cry, “Oh, my God!” our agony and outrage become not simply our identification with humanity but our identification with God in his suffering and in his working out of justice. In such tragedies as Boston, there is one person we usually overlook in our identification with humanity. As repulsive as this may sound, we must also identify with the bomber. He is one of us. The darkness that lurks in these culprits is in all of us. In a universal sense, we share in their guilt. In small ways every day, we hurt and maim those around us with our thoughts and actions, even those we love the most! Jesus said that we cannot afford a posture of self-righteousness because when we even so much as harbor anger against someone, we face the same judgement as a murderer (Matthew 5:21-22). But there is hope and forgiveness when we can genuinely cry, “Oh, my God!”At its base, this is the cry of the priest who stands between God and the world. It is both a cry of horror at human suffering and at our own culpability in it. But it is also a cry of faith, a cry for God to identity with our pain and guilt and do something about it. If nothing else, the horror of Boston should incite us to become partakers. It should provoke us to ask how well we actually know those around us. Do we take the time to identify with each other's alienation, longings, and pain? Do we also have the courage to face each other's sins and darkest thoughts? When we partake in each other’s suffering and partake in each other’s guilt as though they were our own, we proclaim the Kingdom of God has come. We proclaim both “Oh, the humanity!” and “Oh, my God!” March, 2013 A favorite cartoon of my kids is Thomas and His Friends, about a group of animated train engines who get sent by their master Sir Topham Hatt on a variety of jobs. The main character is the wide-eyed, loveable Thomas. Either by his cleverness or in spite of himself, he responds to dire situations by successfully accomplishing his task. Children familiar with the cartoon can recite the train master’s recurring accolade: “Thomas, you are a very useful engine!” We’ve all heard the same praise, or wish we had: “You know how to get the job done. Very useful, very efficient and productive. Quite a multi-tasker. High achiever, for sure.” We might also hear, implicit in these words, a message that when we fail or don’t finish a task in timely fashion, we are somehow of less value or importance. From childhood to college graduation, we’re presented with the perennial question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” When we hear this so often, it easily translates to, “What occupation will form your basic identity? How are you going to find a useful place in society?” When I left home for college, I didn’t know what I wanted to be, and “not knowing” haunted me day and night. I knew I loved plants and animals, the outdoors. I liked writing and acting too. But where would these pursuits get anyone? Many times I was discouraged from following a particular interest just because it wasn’t lucrative enough. Or it wasn’t useful. Finding a meaningful occupation is a legitimate endeavor, but if simply “finding a job” or “being useful” becomes the guiding question of our lives, we've substituted our true identity as relational beings with a utilitarian version of ourselves. The antidote to a utilitarian identity is not to boycott Thomas but to find an identity based on friendship, first with God, then with others. But the sad irony is that we often identify our friends by the same wrong perception we have for ourselves. Like Thomas, we have friends who do things for us. They help us fix our cars, fix our homes, and fix our taxes. We have our work mates, gym mates, and church mates, all “useful engines” in our lives. And we sometimes treat God the same way, as if he were a giant vending machine in the sky. We drop him our two bits worth of prayers and service and expect to get back what we want or, at least, something of equal value. But no one wants to be treated in such a mercenary way. I don’t believe God wants to be “useful,” or that he wants us to be. He does not value us most for what we have to offer. He accepts us the same whether we succeed or fail, or when we have absolutely nothing to offer. What he wants more than anything is true friendship based on unconditional love, no strings attached. Only in this friendship can any kind of work or occupation have meaning. Among Jesus’ last words to his disciples were, “I no longer call you servants . . . . I call you friends.” He wanted them at his side, not because he had a job for them to do but because he wanted their companionship. Whatever work they did, they would do as partners with Jesus. His disciples did not come to him in the first place with degrees and outstanding credentials, shovel ready. They simply came when he called with their hands empty and nothing to offer. The challenge for us then, is what constitutes true friendship and how do we cultivate it in our lives? One illustration might help provide part of an answer. I have a friend, Ted, who is perfectly useless. We meet regularly at a coffee shop near his apartment in the low end of town. He’s a recovering alcoholic and drug addict and has roamed the streets for a fair portion of his life. He’s been in and out of jails, arrested for violent and disruptive behavior. Few employers would take him on, and he doesn’t feel he has a lot to offer the traditional workplace. He’s not what you’d term “a very useful engine.” Ted is very intelligent. He makes me think. His jokes are either just lame or somewhat off color, but the way he enjoys them makes me laugh. He is the first to admit that he’s a bit rough around the edges and socially inappropriate at times, but I love him. He has nothing to offer me but his friendship. And he’s found a friendship with God since we first met. His faith is utterly genuine, simple yet profound, intelligent yet humble. Best of all, he’s helped me to pray more authentically. Our coffee always includes equal doses of good talk, humor and prayer. He’s quick to point out that actually our whole meeting is a prayer because God is always there, listening, and whatever we say to each other we’re also saying to him. Spot on. Ted is not very useful to me, and neither am I to him, and we like it that way. When I’m with Ted, I’m reminded of the kind of friend God wants to be to us. February, 2013 I’ve always preferred the analog clocks over the digital ones. The ones with the dials, remember those? I love those watches that show the gears churning back and forth. They connect me to a more physical age. The terminology used for the old clocks itself feels more physical -- “faces,” “hands,” and “guts” – and brings me a few steps closer to the natural world. And the sweeping arch of a clock’s hand is reminiscent of the arch of the sun and reminds me that I’m “in” time not above it. I’m mortal. There are other things I prefer for their earthly connections. I prefer a landline to a cell phone. I don’t even have a cell phone, which always conjures a joke or two about cave men and the like. For one thing, I’m afraid of getting trapped in the relentless seduction of “smart” technology. We know it doesn’t stop at a cell phone. And the price at the till is only a fraction of the cost I’m not willing to pay. Second, as Neil Postman would put it, I don’t have a problem that the cell phone is an answer to. Also, the landline makes me harder to get hold of. When I use it or my friends call me, it’s usually important. But there’s more to it. As the term implies, landlines follow a terrestrial grid shared by a specific community. A casual look out the window will tell me which pole holds up my line (which we hope is firmly planted) and how I’m connected to my neighbors. Remember the old “party lines”? I don’t either, but they must have been great. People had to fight to use the phone, real interaction, and often had to forgo the phone call, satisfied that whatever it was they had to say could wait until their next face to face meeting with the person. Honestly, I’m okay. I don’t feel like I’ve been left behind and missed out on the rapture. I’m sure the latest gadgets have their good qualities, and I enjoy many of them. I’m not a Luddite or technophobe. I love the fact our house has an automatic dishwasher, a fridge, and flush toilets. I like my computer, too, so I don’t have to crumple up the paper and start all over like I used to. But I think my writing was better when I had to think first before I wrote. And I like my email service for sending off semi-useful bits of info, and I can ignore the back and forth drivel. Although, to be honest, if such drivel were to happen over a couple beers, raw and free of emoticons, I could be all over that. I also like my table saw, but I have to admit I’m not as fit as when I was swinging the old handsaw, and my wife loved it when I came into the house red-faced and musky. In praise of the physical! One other thing. The gadget that most struck fear in my heart was the Kindle readers. I almost went into a depression when they first came out, wondering how soon it would be before real books became obsolete. Like many others, I enjoy the tactile, elemental experience of thumbing through pages of a book, the smell of the paper, the contrast of color and texture created by ink on paper, the unique cover and layout of a book. And call me weird, but I like the idea of taking a jacket off when I take a book out for a stroll and putting a jacket back on when the book goes in. That tickles the heck out of me. I do appreciate the trees for their sacrifice, and I don’t mean that facetiously, for what they give to the making of both the books and the shelves that hold them. It’s hard not to see the redemptive analogy here, a recapitulation of salvation, so to speak. This thinking has theological roots and is embedded in my spiritual journey. As a young Christian, I was influenced primarily by dualistic presentations of the faith. The only versions of faith I had to draw from were either moralistic, with a heavy reliance on codes of behavior, or very cerebral, with a reliance on abstract propositions. Both forms divorced me (and God) from the physical world, the world of the senses and emotions, which I was taught could never be trusted. Better to keep yourself closed up in the sanctuary of the church than risk exploring “the world,” a phrase always tinged in my hearing with an essence of paganism and religious impurity. I eventually learned that a closer relationship with God requires being closer to his physical world not more distant from it. After all, Jesus was real flesh and blood, not just a helpful legend or metaphor for our contemplation. And he left us with some basic, physical elements of life – water, bread, and wine – not just as a means to remember him by. It was his way for us to keep in touch, to stay in communion with him. The sacraments compel all of our senses, not just our minds, so that the reality of Christ flows more freely to the heart. Water, bread, and wine as the elements of life echo back to the elements of the earth, which God used to form man. And then, as the most intimate of his creative acts, God breathed into man the breath of life. We cannot avoid the physical, material world when we speak of religious truth and spiritual wholeness. We cannot neglect creation without neglecting God and ourselves. Both theological abstractions and technological abstractions (i.e. artifacts disassociated from the physical world of which they are composed) see creation as a limitation we must overcome rather than as the source of understanding and wisdom we should embrace and find praiseworthy. Are we losing our memory of creation? Look at a mall or airport. Can we imagine what was there before? Are we aware of each step of technology, from woods and grassland to fiber and pebble to building materials to homes and cities? The steps are probably far more numerous than we suppose. Wendell Berry says, “In such things [as airports and buildings] the materials of the world have entered a kind of orphanhood.” The problem with our magnificent strides in technology is not that it brings us new gadgets, the ones that actually answer real problems and help us serve each other. Man’s inventiveness reflects the image of God, after all. The real problem is that we so easily disassociate these objects, and thus ourselves, from creation. Is our divorce from creation alienating us also from our Creator, who fathered us? Are we orphaned? I think so. We may need, as a spiritual discipline, to hold at bay the deluge of technological advances and instead practice some healthy regression. Reflect on where our marvelous gadgets come from. Engage the physical world with all our senses. Find a real cave to overnight in, with nothing but real blackberries and real apples and leave the plastic ones at home. We may not only survive but come out more human. Lazarus did. We need to seek out real conversations with real faces. If we don’t, we will lose touch with creation and thereby lose touch with our Creator. On my best days, I don’t mind if my kids rip a page from one of my books. Destructive as they might be, at least their hands are in books, and it keeps me whole. The sound of a page tearing is the sound of a tree being felled. I never want to forget that. January, 2013 Over New Years, I was driving leisurely home from the hardware store after picking up a couple of gate hinges, things that hadn’t appeared in my Christmas stocking. A radio feature was on about something called, “unboxing.” As I listened, I learned “unboxing” refers to the opening of packages of new products, particularly the latest high-tech gadgets. I’m not as clued in as my pop-savvy wife is, but even she hadn’t heard of it. I had no idea that unboxing had become a phenomenon. The radio talked excitedly about the unboxing videos that have taken YouTube by storm, describing these mini-videos as transformational for themselves and others they’d met. When I googled “unboxing,” to my amazement I found entire web sites devoted in part or exclusively to the unboxing craze, with articles on people’s experiences and links to a multitude of unboxing events, essentially videos created in living rooms and garages, done ad hoc by average Joes. The question is, why? The videos feature a single person doing the unboxing, from opening the box to reverently pulling out the product and commenting on each part of the contents. I watched a few just to get the idea. One person opened a new Kindle product. Astonishingly, as the box opened, with the use of special effects a bright divine light shone from inside the box. The only thing missing was an angelic chorus. At the end of his presentation, the young man glowed, hoping his audience had enjoyed the “vicarious experience” of opening his new Kindle. On another video, a Japanese host offered a much more formal unboxing of a Nintendo’s new Wii U. He stood in a suit behind a table in a stark white room and pulled on a pair of white gloves for what he called, without being facetious, “the ceremony.” The sound effects of cardboard and bubble wrap were amplified. He ended with a deep bow. These unboxing ceremonies are not done by or paid for by any merchandiser or manufacturer. Their grassroots, subterranean nature is a big part of the attraction for its devoted viewers. Again, why? If “the medium is the message” as McLuhan says, then the unboxing must be the sought-for “thing” in this case. Not only are we all desperate to have the latest gadget, but the craving itself is so important to the unboxing devotees that they film the ceremonial unveiling of the product so that the experience can be shared. The radio program guest remarked with nearly rapt ecstasy how these unboxing videos have created a community among those following a particular brand. I was stunned, on the one hand, at how desperate people are for belonging and where they’ll go to find it, i.e. with anonymous individuals on videos opening boxes of.... new tech stuff. But is this any different than the communities of “friends” we create on popular social networks? Or, is unboxing really so different from the way we engage in the shopping mall gaggles? We all have our own ways of seeking out belonging through virtual communities that offer only transitory fulfillment. I was also amazed at how overtly spiritual these unboxing experiences are for people, and at how the presentations, whether formal or casual, belie a thirst for transcendence. The positive note here is that this activity, in an odd way, reflects what it is to be truly human. It reveals a God-created norm in all of us: a thirst for the divine. We long for fulfillment and meaning, to be cared for, and to belong to someone. And if we’re honest with ourselves, most of us will come to the conclusion that this can’t be found in a box. We may even learn eventually that the true source of all these things we long for is ultimately not found in this world, but rather, in a personal God who does want the abundant life for us—a definition of “life” quite different from what unboxing offers. December, 2012 Early morning, I’m sitting in the living room, lit only by the Christmas tree and the fireplace on a slow burn in the adjacent study. The kids are playing with their mom on the floor. Even the proverbial stockings are hung there. An idyllic setting, one ten years ago I thought I would probably never be part of. Yet, as the events in Newtown, Connecticut, yesterday remind me, this is all so fragile, one disturbed individual with a gun away from being lost. The story only becomes more horrific with each new detail. I cry, and it only makes me hold the moments with my girls more closely. It’s my oldest daughter who reminds me of this fragility every time we reread the Christmas story. Of course, she’s all about the baby Jesus: his need for shelter, for care and cuddling. Her favorite parts are how nobody would give Jesus a place to stay, and they finally had to use a trough for Jesus’ bed. And she insists on the part of the story we often forget: the dark cloud that lurks behind the bright and morning star, the little detail we often tack on the end of the story as an addendum or overlook altogether. It’s the part about the evil man. Remember? Jesus parents have to whisk him away to another country to flee a plot on his life from Herod. Heart-pounding. Jesus, only a short while into his life on earth, is already a target of a paranoid thug bent on murder (which became the mass killings of Jewish babies). Welcome to Earth, Jesus. It’s enough to set one on course for a butt kicking anxiety disorder. The killings of the innocent in Newtown show the monster King Herod has his offspring still today. We understandably cannot make any sense out of this heartless slaughter of 20 kindergarten kids. And the added horror, it happened as these kids were looking forward to Christmas. It all defies our sense of any kind of goodness in the world. It also throws into question the presence of a merciful, just God. No tidy theological answer will do. For people trying to offer comfort to grieving parents, all they can do is be there with them. This too is what Christmas offers. Yes, Herod will always be part of the story. And no, God did not prevent Herod or this killer yesterday from carrying out their evil intentions. But also, Christmas means God is not alien to our fears, aloof and distant. He willingly puts himself in the middle of every heart-rending contingency and threat on our lives. He experienced it all firsthand, so he's qualified to be there with us. Sometimes we need a child to remind us. |
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