Villagersonline : blogs : Boojeee : respGBYTOk

From: Boojeee
Date: Sat Aug 19 08:56:35 MST 2006
Subject: technology, solitude and the community

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emily: fun! fun! (8/20/06)

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emily: fun! fun! (8/20/06)

I agree with Willard's take on the pitfalls of being too plugged in to technology, but Sue thought my recent experience of technology would be a good addition to the string.
It's interesting that as I've been walking on this path of finding silence, solitude and prayer, some of the tools I've found are actually internet-available. Cheryl and I last year were reading through different writings of the mystics mostly from on-line texts. I upgraded my phone a couple months ago and it's now the main bible I use [http://mobible.org], with www.biblegateway.com running a close second. The tools at http://studylight.org are helpful for studying the bible [pretty sure that's what Eric uses for some sermon prep]. On my day of solitude up in Phoenix last week, I was reading about the practice of the daily office which sets aside time for prayer throughout the day. It's what the monasteries use to structure their day [although they have 9 times a day that they stop and pray—usually using psalms as their prayers, and I'm looking at 3 times a day as a possibility]. Up there I found Universalis [http://universalis.com], a website that has a usable liturgy for this purpose. You can use it on the web or download it to your computer and I found yesterday that I can access it on my phone, too.
But these are things to use in my relationship alone with God. The thing I really liked about what Willard said was: most... don't know what community means because community means assuming responsibility for other people and that means paying attention and not following your own will but submitting your will and giving up the world of intimacy and power you have in the little consumer world that you have created. I think the point of solitude, silence and prayer [and in fact a main point in following Christ] is that we bring this back into community. I'm finding that my temptation after having solitude is to become selfish and not want to serve others. It seems like if I get past this, my service is richer than when I haven't taken time away. Christianity is something we live out together as believers and in the context of real-life prebelievers and nonbelievers. If our technology is moving us away from “skin to skin contact” as Willard says, we are losing something of the call of Christ. We live in a lonely, disconnected [to live people, that is] world; we need to be like Christ and actually touch the hurting who need to be healed. Cyber-communities and texting and IMing have their place in terms of thought and communication, but they can't take the place of actually being with people. Like this cyber-community at villagersonline would not be as powerful if it were not for the physical connectedness and involvement that takes place throughout the week among Villagers. And if what happens here on the website is taking the place of that, we're losing out on what our community can really be.

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From: emily
Date: Sat Aug 19 21:28:05 MST 2006
Subject: fun! fun!

There's a lot of cool stuff to think about here. I espcially like Julie's term "prebelievers". It seems to have relevant applications.
For the Willard stuff: I only want to talk about one direction right now: self direction. He talks about the loss of self direction in our young people. He seems to offer technology as a cause for this. I would like to offer another idea for your thinking pleasure. How about: The tornado of choice in our society has motivated us to choose outside direction instead of self direction in order to maintain sanity.
When I look at the world my kids live in I see that our way of training our children is to impose large amounts of outside direction. We start with a VERY long school day and follow it up with even more structured activity. Some have day care, others have lessons, others have sports, and older kids have homework and even more school structured, extra curricular activities.
In this model, when will a kid learn self-direction? Will he learn self direction by getting to help mom choose which structured activity he will participate in? Or perhaps she will learn self direction when she considers what to do with her time in class after finishing assignment early? Does self direction come in the form of choosing when he will goof off in the long course of his directed activities?
Kids might have a few hours after school but their self direction oppurtunities are limited by a broad range of safety concerns. Many parents feel safer allowing their kids engage in TV or gaming rather than run around the neighborhood. But then parents who feel uncomfortable with all that screen time are at their wits end to think of what else to offer. Structured "fun" comes to the rescue. Phew! Sports, Christian kid groups, Chess Club, piano lessons, martials arts, etc. etc. Time and again parents talk about how kids just get up to no good if they don't have enough to "do". Even kids start to feel at loose ends if they don't have structured things to do.
But what can we do? As a mom I feel trapped by this problem. I've even considered the possibility that maybe I'm wasting my time even caring about unstructured time. What if our society is so complex that choosing what to do next is often too much for our brains to handle? In fact, we should just give in and structure every minute so that we have a safe place from which to process all the choices that are constantly streaming past us. Is our modern version of self direction the just the discipline of choosing which outside direction you will submit to?
Its possible. And I am probably a child of shifting realities. Caught between the reality of needing outside direction to help me maintain sanity but longing for a less complex life when I had to make do with what was available. I grew up with one foot in simplicity and one foot in complexity.
We live in a world with a lot of choice and a lot of information. Technology can help us manage that information. Structure can help us manage the choice. But sometimes they manage us. This is not new. Being ruled by our tools has always been around. In fact, I think the 10 commandments were a tool and that got pretty ugly by the time Jesus showed up.
EmilyMc

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