I enjoy technology, perhaps a little too much. It allows me to publish this blog, after all. And then there’s Facebook, where I keep up with all my “friends,” and Twitter where I share brilliant nuggets of wisdom 140 characters at a time. I buy music on ITunes and record my favorite TV shows with my DVR so I can watch them whenever I want. Like it or not, we live in a plugged-in world of constant messages and invasive images. We are surrounded on all sides by noise, pictures, news, knowledge and entertainment. None of these are bad things in and of themselves. But taken together, this ever-present media blitz can overtake our lives and block out any kind of an interior life or conversation with God. We try to find moments of prayer and attempt to catch glimpses of the divine, but images swirl in our heads and we have a hard time seeing the light of truth.
But moments of clarity are possible, even in the midst of a muddy, befuddled world. Instances of clear-blue reality sometimes cut through the clouds when we least expect it. A verse of scripture we have heard many times before offers us something new. We read the right book at just the right time. A song comes on the radio that seems sung for us alone. A conversation with a friend reveals a truth that had been hidden or ignored. Clarity. Truth. God moves through and in our lives all the time. Clarity comes with our awareness, with unplugging and paying attention, with allowing God to “show up” in our lives and speak.
Ask yourself in silence: What keeps me from seeing and hearing God with clarity? When was the last time I found a message from God in the words or actions of others?
Technology, and ‘the CALCULATING way of thinking that is part of the technical revolution’ as mentioned by Martin Heidegger (philosopher) in 1955, ‘will become the dominating and exclusive way of thinking’.
Why is this so dangerous? Heidegger said,” because then we would find, together with the highest and most successful development of our thinking on the ‘calculating’ level, an indifference towards reflection and a complete thoughtlessness… then humanity would have renounced and thrown away its ability to reflect. What is at stake is to keep alive our reflective thinking!”
Steve, your whole reflection on the word ‘Clarity’, is saying precisely the same thing, and I quote, ‘this ever-present media blitz can overtake our lives and block out any kind of an interior life or conversation with God. We try to find moments of prayer and attempt to catch glimpses of the divine, but images swirl in our heads and we have a hard time seeing the light of truth’.
Heidegger calls for ‘an attitude in which we say YES to the new techniques, in so far as they serve our daily lives … and NO when they claim our whole being’. He called for a new spirituality, a ‘New way of being in the world without being of it’!
Thanks for this timely reminder to ‘remain calm and open, as this will give us a new rootedness, a new groundedness, a new sense of belonging. Thus we can remain “reflective beings” and prevent ourselves from becoming victims of a “calculating” existence’.