WE LIVE IN A CULTURE OF DEVOUT WORSHIPERS!

“The easiest practice of reverence I know is simply to sit down somewhere outside, preferably near a body of water, and pay attention for at least twenty minutes. It is not necessary to take on the whole world at first. Just take the three square feet of earth on which you are sitting, paying close attention to everything that lives within that small estate.” – Barbara Brown Taylor, in An Altar in the World

            Oh, and, as I’m sure Ms. Brown Taylor would concur, preferably leave your smart-phone indoors.

            Settling aboard a flight the other day, I was again reminded we live in a culture of devout worshipers. As I glanced about the cabin, I noted virtually every head was bowed in reverence although I’ve long since learned such does not equate to every eye being closed.

            Perhaps I was particularly sensitive to the reality having just paraded through business class where I’d struggled to resist declaring “look up, look up, your redemption draweth night!” (By the way, who’s the rocket scientist that suggested boarding airline passengers front to back? but enough from cattle class.)  Further, I was departing on a one week self-imposed sabbatical from social-media so my anti-technology antennae were on full-alert.

            Can somebody please tell me what’s up with our mind-boggling obsession with mobile technology that threatens to strangle what’s left of the few social-skills that survive in the public domain? I mean, honestly people, I’m not interested in an epitaph that reads: “I too was addicted to that hand-held god. Call me!”  What does the future hold for a populace scarcely managing a grunt of acknowledgement at a seatmate prior to frantically consulting that ubiquitous albatross for the latest spam?

            And, let’s not be mistaken here, this less-than-smart preoccupation with the so-called smart-phone is as rampant within circles of people of faith as it is without. I weary of walking into pastors’ meetings to find ninety per-cent of attendants cuddled up in a corner yakking on cell phones. If my self-esteem is directly related to the amount of time I spend on an IT-drip than I’ve got bigger problems than I know and so does my congregation!

            Ok, ok, to be fair, at least the infatuation with smart-phones has solved one problem well summarized by the wag who asked: “What’s the similarity between the guy trying to give up smoking and a newcomer to a nudist colony? Neither of them are sure what to do with their hands.” So is that what this is about, then – feverishly scrolling, punching buttons, scanning puny screens, all in an effort to avoid the awkwardness of our social insecurities?

            If so, Jesus must be immensely proud of us for trying to convert the world to the unique nature of the Christian perspective all the while aligning ourselves yet again according to the pattern of the status quo! I suggest we do well to periodically consider that the greatest communicator of all time did so without the aid of a smart-phone and its incumbent access to the myriad of communication venues swirling in cyberspace.

            So I took Ms. Brown Taylor’s advice to practice some reverence and went and sat by the sea for seven days sans electronic encumbrances. Curiously, it may have appeared to onlookers that I was essentially doing nothing; but such a conclusion would be inaccurate. I was ‘revering’ or ‘reverencing,’ words that come instructively close to ‘refreshing.’

            Or, to cite the late, great prophet Richie Mullins, I was clearing my head because “the stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the Giver of all good things.”