Fr. Don's Daily Reflection
Note on a restaurant menu: “Cell phones in use will be confiscated and turned into hash.” Most of us learned with some maturity that doctors, clergy, teachers, public officials, that none of these is immune from questioning. That, even though often idols of our childhood, they have faults. But do we question technology, an idol in our society? So often if technology shows that something can be done we take that as "it must be done". Much of what technology presents to us is driven at least in part by the desire of the manufacturer or inventor 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's something we should do? All this is often presented as an increase in communication. Communication? Yes, but apparently with anyone but the people we are with now. We see people walking around wired, oblivious to the person with them or those they meet. It becomes another way to avoid living in the present, with these people here and now, in this place. Anything, anyone, but the present, the here and now. What about turning the gadget off to be present to the people we're with?
That note on the restaurant menu was apt. “Cell phones in use will be confiscated and turned into hash.” The restaurateur's idea is that, for one thing, we should appreciate the food before us and, even more, value and enjoy 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 Calgary? Going even further: what about enjoying 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.
