More often than not, I feel out of step… out of sync… disconnected… something of an anomaly, a misfit, an oddball.
The experience of being anachronistic is uncomfortable. (Note: Not anarchistic, but I often wonder if there is a connection, for me, between these two?)
Counter-cultural is the polite, positive way of describing myself.
I feel deeply, the tension of being rooted in a culture that is not my home, longing for a better country (Hebrews 11).
The conflict of being in the world and yet not of the world (John 17:15-17)…
Contextualized but not syncretistic (in missiological terms)…
Different but not irrelevant…
As Christ was, the mystics, prophets, poets and artists have always been on the periphery, listening to a different song, touched by another reality, moving to a different heartbeat, seeing an alternative way; restless, discontent, misunderstood. It is a hard way to make a living.
I feel out of step.
J. I. Packer says our North American Christian experience is being 3000 miles wide and 1/2 inch deep. (A Quest for Godliness)
A pancake culture. Spread wide and thin.
Relationally, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually - wide and thin!
Out of step, I long for depth of soul, spirit, intellect, relationships and fortunately, I feel I regularly move into and experience what I long for.
My tension and my lament is that I am an apostle of these realities, an artist/communicator of strange tidings to a world that really is not that interested.
We prefer to have a thousand Facebook Friends (really Acquaintances) who know us shallowly, through the surface impressions we offer, the fleeting glimpses, the chattering of our experiences and the disconnected hodgepodge of our being that is randomly displayed in fragments that make little sense. This image can be found here.
But, to tell the truth, your Facebook Acquaintances really don't care (much), for they are already updating and refreshing their screen and your comments are 15 minutes out of date.
I am a deep reader living in the Age of Power Browsers.
Power Browsers who spend most of their time in the Internet world which is an "ecosystem of interruption technologies." (quoted in The Shallows)
Power Browsers who want to be distracted. T. S. Eliot speaks of being "distracted from our distraction by distraction" (The Four Quartets)" How prescient are his words, who knew not the age of the ubiquitous, interruption technologies of the internet.
Daily I spend leisurely, lingering time in silence and solitude: reading, reflecting, discerning, praying and encourage others to do the same.
A Sociology report (2005) described such activities as diminishing and now the experience of what was called a minority reading class, who are viewed as the:
"eccentric practitioners of an increasingly arcane hobby!"
I love the wizardry of the well turned phrase, but I live in a Twitter World where writing has been reduced to "a means of recording chatter" (The Shallows).
Virtuosity, poetry and word-smithing are giving way to much mindless, chattering ado about nothing. Which is forgotten as quickly as it is skimmed and scanned. All that we really have is the "illusion" of having been connected to the chatterer.
Interesting, isn't it, to think of the images of two birds, one tweeting and one reading!
And spirituality?
What can we say of emerging spirituality in this world?
What of the wisdom of the ageless classics, the guidance of past sages and saints, the hard won experiences of the devout seekers of God? It languishes in obscurity in a world that prefers sound/image bytes delivered in entertaining ways.
Distracted surfing and surface skimming has replaced slow, engaging, soaking and immersing in texts…
Jesus asked his followers, if they were unable to stay with him in wakeful attentiveness for extended prayer? Our spiritual attention spans today seem to be 10-15 seconds (really, that is what internet studies reveal). So, in truth, we must say to Jesus - no, we can't be with you in intentional, deep ways of intimacy.
So . . .
I am torn…
I am troubled...
I am tempted…
For this is my world, my culture, my context…
And my mission is to engage this world in which I keenly experience myself as a stranger. Engage this world with wisdom it needs but no longer wants.
And I don't want to be a relic or fossil or the latest in the line of technological Luddites.
So I dispense diet soda ideas that appeal to our cultural tastes, when our need is the nourishing, thick, heady draughts of heavenly nectar (but that full bodied drink is now quite beyond the digestive capacity of our malnourished hearts and minds).
So . . . I water down the truth of the ages and package it in entertaining ways.
And I lament . . .
Brian K. Rice
Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lcitypepad.com
This powerful image can be found here.
