Present in spirit

This is a contribution I made on another blog called Repose (www.findrepose.co.uk) which I thought friends following my blog might be interested to see.

I don't know about you, but I often find myself getting distracted or sidetracked when I'm meant to be doing something else; I log in to my email to send an important message and I end up reading all of the jokes and ad-mail and log out without ever getting round to the very thing I logged on to do!


Having this technology available to us is fantastic and I'm sure it helps many people to work more efficiently or deal more promptly with problems that arise, but I think at the same time, it is contributing to a growing trend among people to be present in body, if not in spirit - that is, to be physically present when our minds are elsewhere.

In his DVD 'Everything is Spiritual', Rob Bell talks about how he became aware of a habit his sons had developed to always say, "Dad... Dad... Dad," when they wanted to get his attention - upon reflection he realised that this repetition had come about not as an annoying verbal tick, but because it would usually take them three attempts to get him to be fully aware of them talking to him.

Have we reached a stage where, to keep our attention, things have to be bigger, brighter, louder... more entertaining? How is it, for example, that an hour spent in church or at work can feel like it drags interminably, yet we can easily lose a whole evening watching funny or odd video clips online? I think it has less to do with our ability to focus and more to do with the fact that our lives have become a constant stream of consciousness. We're always contactable; able to send emails, texts, video messages, browse the internet and manage our social lives all on a single device that'll fit in our pockets. There's nothing inherently bad in that, but when there's no time away, no 'switching off' we get overloaded and find ourselves tuning out when our attention should be fully engaged - our bodies are telling us what our minds are refusing to acknowledge: that we can't be everywhere at once, constantly on the go and always available to anyone and everyone.

My challenge, to myself as much as to you, is to seek to keep a balance between productivity and presence - not to be spread so thin that we find ourselves physically present and mentally absent all at once; to allow ourselves time to 'be' and not 'do'. Most especially, if we want to enjoy the presence of God, we have to be available to Him and present in 'body, mind and spirit' if we are to have a hope of "loving the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." (Matt 22:37).