An enormous danger to the Church is an unthinking Christianity that slips into society's patterns of living without investigating their validity. We should fear bandwagons that draw in participants who haven't really thought through the significance and meaning of a particular movement for their lives. Marva Dawn Truly The Community
Lent is a time for Christians to focus often giving up things. Fat Tuesday also pancake or Shrove Tuesday last week is a clearing of formerly luxury foods for the season of Lent. A few years ago I limited my tv viewing to one hour a day. Friends give up chocolate. This year in Italy catholics are urging switching off technology such as mp3 players and abstaining or reducing internet surfing or text messaging until Easter.
Of course the issue really isn't about denial but discipline and self-discipline. Reducing my tv viewing freed me up for reading more things. Since I now don't have a tv now, I've decided to ensure I do an hour of devotional reading a day in this season. Not Bible study nor prayer but devotional reading by trying to read good Christian literature. I avoid as much Christian fluff as possible. Marva Dawn asserts "How people think is the basis for who they become."
Makoto Fujimura asserts that "we carry the dust of Eden in our DNA. Now, as we face a world ... we need to understand that our imaginative capacities carry a responsibility to heal, every bit as much as they carry a responsibility to depict angst." I feel Lent is a time of simplicity getting rid of complexity in order to find God both in angst and healing. Recently I was reading about the Father General of the Jesuits, Pedro Arupe who after celebrating Mass in a slum in South America, was invited to a home by a big man. Arupe wasn't sure whether to go or not, but he went to a shack that was ready to collapse.
He had me sit down on a rickety old chair. From there I could see the sunset. The big man said to me, "Look sir, how beautiful it is!" We sat in silence for a few minutes. The sun disappeared. The man then said, " I don't know how to thank you for all you have done for us. I have nothing to give you, but I thought you would like to see this sunset. You liked it, didn't you? Good evening."
I missed the sunset but last night I looked at the moon and then at a very bright light in the sky. So bright it was difficult not to keep looking at it and wondering what it was. I know now it is Venus in the Western sky. Can we appreciate or wonder at the simple things when we have the distraction of other things? I'm not sure or not.
In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.
