I never thought or anticipated that this job would involve
so much emailing! But email, I suppose, is basically the preferred method of
communication these days; whether it’s students on campus, colleagues at the
church, or former professors, the primary way I get in
touch with them, near or far, is through the tap-tap of a keyboard which
magically produces words on a screen and instantly sends them firing through microfibre
cables to their intended destination. And as I continue to establish connections with a variety of people on campus, it is an important and useful tool.
We should be cautious, though, about email and electronic
connections. I don’t want to necessarily ultimately condemn or condone simply
making use of them; what we need to be attentive to is what kind of mind, body,
and spirit they are shaping in us the more we make use of them.
Email is fast. Email is convenient. Email is efficient. Speed,
convenience, efficiency – these can be and often are all good things. But they
are good things in moderation. They
are good things if we don’t let them
dictate every part of our life. However, it is fairly easy for them do just that; we might subtly and without noticing it look for fast and
efficient meals, fast and efficient conversations, fast and efficient reading,
meetings, church services, etc...
But my conviction is that we are not only created for speed.
We are created for silence, stillness, and slowness, created to be attentive to
things, places, and people that can easily get caught up in the flow of a
fast-paced, email-dictated day. God is always present, always available, always
wanting deeper communion with us; but fast-paced technological lives can
sometimes paradoxically make us fast asleep to God’s creative reality.
So maybe we need to effect a sort of reversal; instead of
allowing an efficiency-based thing like email to dictate those parts of our
lives that require more time, like food, friendship, and reading, maybe we can
also let those slower activities
affect the way we do our fast-paced activities.
Instead of making dinner into an email event (quick, convenient, microwavable)
we can make email in a dinner event (slow, careful, over-baked for a few
hours).
Of course, I don’t mean to deprive us of the convenience and
efficiency of email. This is an attitude change,
not a literal change. Spending hours on a simple email might not (though it
certainly may) be feasible or possible. But maybe it is possible that a slow, contemplative
dimension can work its way into the seemingly most un-contemplative activity,
like writing a short email and sending it off through the internet at the speed
of light. If we take conscious-time to slow down, maybe for a few minutes at
the beginning and end of the day, then that attentiveness to God’s presence in
those few minutes can open us up to God’s presence in those emailing-type
activities that can threaten to dominate our outlook on life.
And if we do
that, then we are truly following Jesus, who not only embodied God everywhere but saw
God everywhere; “Consider the lilies of the field…”
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