Sorry, I was miles away…

"Blinded by distractions,
lost in matter-less affairs…"
— dc Talk, "Day By Day"

Recently while sitting on a train, a largely unremarkable thing happened – so unremarkable it gave me pause for thought. What was this non-event?

I got a new PB in Bejeweled Blitz. Not just any Personal Best: I cracked the half-million mark (and beat my previous best by over 150,000)! I enjoyed the quick squirt of adrenaline as it shot through my body, and then I thought: "Huh."

For a while now I've become increasingly frustrated and annoyed at the way the Internet and smart phones have trained my attention patterns — the classic Gen-Y dance I call "The Context-Switch One-Step". Take your electronic distraction generator in one hand, drop your head slightly, place earphones in ears, and away we go, with a one-two-three, one-two-three, facebook-check, twitter-feeds, email-check, one-more-game, when's-that-tram, one-two-three…

…sorry.

Such constant "engagement" (from pellet-popping to drinking from the firehose) has made it very hard for my brain to either 1) switch off or 2) give undivided attention to just one thing. Sometimes this is a benefit, but mostly, it just leaves me distracted and not at rest.

This spills out into all sorts of areas; why bother taking the time to cook a healthy meal when "fast food" slips into the cycle more easily? Or learning a new skill? Or making any time investment at all?

But the place where rubber hits road for me the hardest is spending time with God — how can I be still when everything in my mind screams "hurry, hurry, faster, more!" How can I spend time meditating on a chunk of connected verses, when they seem to meld into a stream of 140-character morsels right before my eyes?

Aldous Huxley would be horrified…

A curious beast

Here a Rum-tum-tugg-o-war
A NY state of mind,
A yin & yang of fear defined
by pride and self-obsess galore…

Saturday morning

Sunlight streaming through my window/
urging me to go and do/
all I want is/
for the world to/
shove off
for a-
while and
let me
be…

Voice, Part 3

"Trust Me with all your heart," You said.
"Why?" I thought, repulsed.

"Don't rely on your own perspective," You said —
but that made no sense at all.

"Wherever you go, realize I'm there, working," You said.
"What have you ever done for me?" I retorted.

"I'll tell you where to go," You said.
And I thought "I'm sure you will!"

---

There was silence for a few seconds, as You quizzically raised an eyebrow to say "Really? Not even you believe that!"

*sigh*You were right, as usual.

And then You leaned over, gave me a hug, and said "Come on, let's go this way…"

---

(Proverbs 3:5,6; Malachi1:2a)

Prodigal brothers in arms

"Are we so different?"
younger brother calls to elder.
"We both know the old dodderer
means well, but you've got to
admit He's a bit misguided.
We've got brains, we've got time -
let's go, see what we can do!"

"Are you kidding?!"
rejoined the elder.
"We have a real base here! It's true
the Old Man is a bit tiresome, but
this farm's a solid investment!
Soon He'll die, and we can run things
the way they should be done! Or at least
not pretend so much…"

So the younger ran out one way
and threw away his lot, while
the other toiled and strained and
worked long years on
his share of the plot.

And all the while the Father grieved
for the day His two lost sons would
come back to His heart, and Home.

like a child…

"Don't worry, Dad, I'm a big kid now!" exclaimed the lad, straining under the weight of a big box of this-and-that. His Father smiled knowingly to Himself. The more he changed, the more he seemed to stay the same. "But he is growing," He said to himself. "And becoming more like his Brother every day."
And then there was a crash and a cry from down the hall, and the Father rushed to clean up the newly-created mess of boy and bric-à-brac.

Keep turning the pages…

When she had got to the third page [of another story] and come to the end, she said, "That is the loveliest story I've ever read or ever shall read in my whole life. Oh, I wish I could have gone on reading it for ten years. At least I'll read it over again."
But here part of the magic of the Book came into play. You couldn't turn back. The right-hand pages, the ones ahead, could be turned; the left-hand pages could not.
... "It was about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill, I know that much. But I can't remember, and what shall I do?"'

--C.S. Lewis, "Voyage of the Dawn Treader"