Iwas startled to learn last week that the average U.S.
teen sends and receives 3,339 text messages a month - more than 100 a day. If you have a teenager in your family, you are certainly aware of how adept they are in the interplay of two flying thumbs and a tiny keyboard. And you have no doubt realized that if you want to stay in contact with your kids, you had better learn to text.
I’m not an alarmist about the trend and I realize that in speaking up I risk sounding like a Luddite, the early 19th-century skilled textile workers who destroyed automated looms to combat the new technology theyfeared would take away their jobs.
On the face of it, texting seems a useful way to maintain frequent connections with our fellow human beings. But recently I have embraced the technology tothe point that I’m now wondering how my spiritual life is affected by frequent texting, as well as an already entrenched habit of checking e-mail more often than necessary.
God’s promise is to be with us. As creatures created in God’s image, our highest and best characteristic as humans is our God-like ability to be fully present with one another. Human communication, at its best, brings with it the capacity to listen, as St. Benedict said, with the “ear of the heart.”
We long for deep, penetrating and meaningful connections with other human beings. That longing is emblematic of an even moreprofound hunger for connection with the Divine. All our attempts as humans to communicate with one another pale in comparison with the realization of universal oneness that is possible, if we are receptive to deep spiritual connection wherever it occurs.
Yet, increasingly, the “God-shaped hole” existing within each of us appears to take on the rectangular profile of a smartphone.
I wouldn’t suggest that God’s promise to be with us couldn’t be fulfilled through all manner of new communication technologies.
I’m quite certain that fl oating in the cloud of cyberspace are countless examples of digitized language that poetically convey soul-nurturing and genuine heart-felt sentiment.
It’s just that an obsession with constantly staying in contact with others has a tendency to trivialize the messages conveyed. Opportunities for meaningful human contact are squeezed out by the ubiquitous presence of more mundane messages.
Our souls hunger for sustaining, fulfilling and substantive communication and, instead, we are in a feeding frenzy of texting that leaves us always hungry for more. It is as if we always ate junk food and never sat down for a nutritious meal. Our souls, in other times sustained by the richness and diversity of human interaction, are almost imperceptibly starving.
As humans, we have the chance to practice a kind of higher connectivity by engaging in meaningful human intercourse. This occurs when we are able to bring all our attention to bear on the interaction of the moment. When we can gaze intently into the eyes of the speaker - “listen with your eyes” as my young daughter once urged me to listen - hold the hands of the suff ering so they don’t have to bear their pain alone and smile with those whose joy can’t be contained, we bring a Divine presence to relationships.
If we attempt to text and talk and watch TV (and, God forbid, drive!) at the same time, we bring a divided selfinto the world.
The kind of deep listening we all desire from others, and that in unselfi sh moments we wish to extend to others, requires that some measure of silence be incorporated into our lives. The most adept listeners, those who are most skilled at bringing the presence of God into relationships, seem to be those who practice some kind of meditation, those who practice allowing thoughts to drift away while they listen in silence for the voice of the Divine. Experiencing that kind of stillnessrequires occasionally walking away from our cell phones.
Who knows how interpersonal communication technology will evolve? Perhaps richness can be restored and the one dimensionality of tiny flat screen communication will dissolve as new technologies develop. My hope is that our souls don’t starve to death in the process.
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THE REV. ROGER JOSLIN IS THE VICAR AT ALL SAINTS’ EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN BENTONVILLE.
COMMENTS ARE WELCOMED AT [email protected].
Religion, Pages 11 on 10/30/2010