Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”

Note on a restaurant menu: “Cell phones in use will be confiscated and turned into hash.”

Most of us learned with a little maturity that doctors, clergy, teachers, public officials, that none of these are immune from questioning. That, even though often idols of our childhood, they do have faults. But do we question technology, in practice an idol in our society?

So often it seems that if technology shows that something can be done we unthinkingly buy that. Much of what technology presents to us is driven by the desire to make a living -- or a bit more! In the last decades (it has been that fast!) we have been presented with gadget after gadget which, as one claim goes, make it possible for us to take everything in our life with us in this little rectangular item. Do we ask ourselves whether that is something we should do?

All this is often presented as an increase in communication. Communication? Yes, but apparently with anyone but the persons next to us at the moment. (See students, for example, walking with another while both are engaged through their i-phones with someone far away.)

We know and we see people walking around wired, oblivious to those who are with them or whom they meet. It becomes another way that we avoid the present, these people here and now, in this environment. Anything, anyone, but the present, but the here and now.

"Cell phones in use will be confiscated and turned into hash." The restaurant's idea is that we should appreciate the food before us and, and, it is to be hoped, even more, value the people we are with. Why come with Ted and Jill to dine and then spend our time talking to Bill or Angie in Shanghai, Madrid, or North Dakota?

Further, what about having some silence in our lives? Do our ears and minds have to be filled with talk or noise all the time? Rabbi Abraham Heschel writes that silence and prayer leave an opening for God to speak to us.

Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”

Reply to Fr. Don at: DTalafous@csbsju.edu

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