Category — Words for thought

The other night I woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning with an idea: give up the internet for a year. While the thought came in the flicker of night, it has been gestating for more than a year. It began during the research and writing of “In with the Old,” an article for the New York-based journal The Curator, and set for republication this summer.

In it I wrote:

There’s no question that technology has overrun our lives. Over the past century, the world has welcomed technological ‘progress’ with arms wide open and we’re living with the clicking, dinging, anxiety-inducing deluge of it.

But a creative backlash is underway, helping human beings cope with the avalanche of data that passes in front of most of us every day through the use of computers and cell phones.

Slow food, the back-to-the-land movement, and groups like letter writing clubs are being formed by a new subculture: the 21st century luddite, wielding fountain pen and notebook, and some checking e-mail from the public library a mere hour per week.

Rebecca Dolen and Brandy Fedoruk [owners of a computer-free paper store in Vancouver, called Regional Assembly of Text] think this movement is more than a blip on the technological continuum.

“We started the letter writing club right off the bat because we wanted to have an ongoing community event. There have been a few hardcore regulars but 80% are new people each month. We started with five to ten people and now regularly have 20 to 30.”

There’s a universal sense that something must be done to rope the nodes in. But what? We can’t all pack our bags and head for the hills, or can we?

I’ve been growing increasingly uncomfortable with the role the internet plays in my day-to-day life and the impacts it is having in our society at large.

Last week I watched a CBC documentary called: “Are we digital dummies?” In it there is a scene where a priest is conducting a blessing service for smart phones. Here is a man dressed in holy vestments calling on the God of the universe to bless a Blackberry. I had a visceral — absolute bodily repulsion — to the scene unfolding before my eyes.

While the benefits of the internet are numerous: Skype and photo sharing, for example, it is mixed with an ever-dominating persistence for our attention, and it is this I find unsettling. The centrality of internet technology in our daily lives makes me squeamish and I feel I need to figure out why.

I have suspicions. I think the internet makes me lazy, as a thinker, a writer, and a friend. I think the internet allows me to emotionally disengage, enabling me to pass the time with ever-ready filler: mundane, contextless information via newsfeeds, Facebook and Google Reader.

The truth is, I am both bored and obsessed with the web.

It is my hope to complete higher education in the area of media studies, particularly looking at new media’s impact on our understanding of citizenship. During this season with young children I am able to do little to move towards this dream. Completing this year-long fast from the internet would allow me to conduct first-hand research while staying at home with my children. It will also hinder the amount and kind of work I am able to complete as a self-employed writer. Thus, I am seeking out a publication or two that would be interested in chronicling this journey. I am offering to submit a regular column by snail mail or couriered USB, as I will not be accessing email.

I anticipate this fast as an opportunity to enliven my real relationships and filter out the extra. I know it will be an enormous adjustment in my day-to-day life, but I also expect it will be a life-giving exercise. I know it will be a huge change for my family, in particular not seeing pictures and blog posts appearing online. Instead I hope to send a regular update (with lots of pictures) by mail, pick up the phone and have Michael organize Skype dates with grandparents and the kids. I will not allow our children to suffer the loss of grandma and grandpa face time on account of this fast.

Spiritually, I hope this fast will open my ears and my eyes to God’s voice and the world around me, and quiet the hum of my online life.

I welcome all of your thoughts (and thank those that already shared on facebook.) If I go ahead I plan to begin January 2012.

“Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal. If any of you wants to serve me, then follow me. Then you’ll be where I am, ready to serve at a moment’s notice. The Father will honor and reward anyone who serves me.” - Jesus

John 12:24-26, The Message Bible

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I an move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

- Rainier Maria Rilke

“The prayer preceding all prayers is “May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.”

- C.S. Lewis in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, Chapter 15

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

- Wendell Berry

Three years. We be three. A chord of three strands is not easily broken… With all this in mind, here’s what Michael and I created at Raw Canvas.

“Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work:

If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up!

Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?

Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”

- Ecclesiastes 4

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We are moving in six days. I am a big ball of mixed emotions. This space will be mostly silent as I pack up our life’s belongings. Encouragement welcome. xoxo

“As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles.” - Walt Whitman

:::

oh Walt, yes, let me see with your eyes.

In honour of my friend Julia(-the-Chemist)’s wedding her beloved Bryan(-the-Geographer) this afternoon, I’d like to share a quote about marriage. Congratulations to the beautiful couple!

“If two stand shoulder to shoulder against the gods,
Happy together, the gods themselves are helpless
Against them while they stand so.”

- Maxwell Anderson

God’s not dead
because I thought him/her so
like the holocaust nay-sayers
the animated moon walkers stabbing two inch toothpicks into three mile styrofoam craters unlikely green

God’s not dead
because we’ve lost some children
now witness to blinking nail bed growing in woman womb
delivering half-way placentas nine pound eleven ounce spirits through openings that for thirty years were smaller than bar soap bent to its circumference
making all labia-living believers

God’s not dead
because city does not become her/him
forgetting book promises cambodian valleys cave to hazel life
seven year pupils erasing invisibility lip-spoken not theirs
up climbing through arm of unlikely stranger
otherworldly kindness our universal language

:::

Part of Imperfect Prose Thursdays

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.”

- Helen Keller