The Letterpress

Here is a story about a person I admire and a craft which interests me. In the process of watching a documentary about a craftsman still keeping alive the craft of the letterpress Evan notices that one of the jobs is an invitation to the ordination of Sarah Coakley. I'm fascinated by the letter press - I love the look and feel of what it creates so the documentary is interesting in its own right. But I'm also a great admirer of the theologian Sarah Coakley. So check it out and maybe check out some of her essays!

Living without Electronics - Edited

This weekend I spent 24 hours without my laptop and only checking the time on my ipod once. Not a big deal you think? It was to me. It felt great. I read, I played a game that used only dice and no electricity, I talked and laughed with a friend, I went for walks and looked at the world around me.

Over on Front Porch Republic today there is a post about the environmental and personal costs of our dependence on electronics. It is pushing me to contemplate a regular sabbath from my electronics for the planet and for my own sanity.

You can read it here. Didn't notice the piece was by Patrick Deneen. Should have realized. I find his blog really challenging. So you can also read the piece here.

A Modern Haggadah

This made me laugh!

Thanks Tim!

Solitude

I went to the Martha Retreat Centre today for a quiet day. I went after breakfast and stayed until a little after 3:00. The sisters are wonderfully hospitable. They provide you with a room and feed you good food and leave you alone so you can enjoy the silence. It went by so quickly I was stunned. The quality of silence there is really embracing...I love it there and don't know why I don't go more often.

I did have a moment though when I wanted to check something on the internet and was jerked by the realization that I didn't have internet access. I had a picture in my head of me sneaking into the office to 'borrow' their computer and then I breathed deep and let the impulse go. The funny thing is that now I can't even remember what seemed so important that I had to check it right then.

When I got back a friend had posted this link on facebook. I think that there is real truth to this story on the impact of internet access:

So please don't confuse what I have to say for that tired Luddite screed about how technology is ruining us. It isn't.

Except it just might.

Because of technology, we never have to be alone anymore. And that's the problem.

So for all sorts of reasons I'm grateful to the Sisters of St. Martha for their charism of hospitality and their gift of silence.

New Technology

Well, I've figured out how to use the little camera on my computer - how cool is this.

New technology

Well I have a new laptop.  My old one was giving me all sorts of trouble so I decided it was time to upgrade.  I didn't want to deal with Vista so I've gone over to a Macbook.  So far I'm loving it although I still have some glitches to work out with my wireless and mail settings.  I don't know anyone who likes Vista and a number of people have told me recently that they are switching or have switched over to Mac because of it.  You wonder why Microsoft doesn't do more to get the bugs worked out.  I know from checking out the stat programme I run that very few people who come to this blog are running Vista.

My Mac friends will be delighted and I'm sure I will become an obnoxious convert - especially since I can run Microsoft programmes on this baby.  Now to transfer everything over to it.  See you in a month :-)

What do we value most?

A friend just sent me this link to a blog posting about a church and a whole community that got the boot in Germany to allow strip mining. What this says about the state of the world is really distressing. He suggests some interesting things about the connections between technology and individualism too.

Walking

My van is still in the shop so I'm walking and busing it these days. One of the advantages of living downtown though is that walking places isn't a hardship. So today I set out to meet a student for lunch and then putzed my way back, stopping for a latte at the Round Street Cafe. As I noticed things I don't normally notice when I'm driving I was mindful of something Daniel Taylor wrote about walking on the island of Iona: "Walking is the maximum desirable speed for seeing things fully enough to name them. And when we name things then we begin to value them. No wonder that we all want to be named and known." Our technology has a way of distancing us from our environment. In the van not only am I separated from the weather, sounds, and smells of the city, but I'm too caught up in paying attention to other vehicles and lights to pay any attention to houses, pedestrians, flowers or anything else for that matter.

I remember reading something about how train travel changed publishing. When people traveled by carriage they were going slowly enough that they could pay attention to what was around them. But when they started to take the train they went too quickly and were removed from what was around them so they started to read on the train. So there were all sorts of magazines and penny novels produced for this new market.

Sr. Helen Prejean writes in the beginning of Dead Man Walking that not having air conditioning in New Orleans means that you have to move slow in the heat and humidity. Wendell Berry chooses to only write by natural light so he can only write during the day time. There have been a number of things written lately about stress and how the fact that technology allows us to work around the clock has been really hard on us.

It will make life a lot more convenient when I have my van back but there are things to be learned from an enforced slowing down.

Techno sendup

A friend just sent me a great website, Geek Culture, with a very funny comic called The Joy of Tech. Today's comic is particularly fitting for the talk I gave last night and particularly the comments made by Bill Cade, the president of the U of L, in his comments introducing our series. I laughed out loud.

Thanks Scott!

Leisure, the Basis of Humanity

Well I did my talk at the library last night and it went well. We had a good turnout and the discussion was interesting. I talked about workaholism and the way technology is involved in keeping us enslaved to work.

I don't think the technology is inherently bad (after all I'm on it right now and loving every minute of it). But I did talk about the way it changes people's perception of time and what is timely. And I talked about an environment of work addiction that distorts our priorities and relationships.

One of the things I find really sad is that clergy are often among the worst for this. A pastor who used to be here told me once that he was dreading some clergy meetings he had for his denomination. He said he was 'sucking gas fumes' and he didn't look forward to having to listen to all these clergy brag about how hard they were working and how successful they were at building the kingdom. A number of years ago I went to a ministerial meeting exhausted from a really difficult funeral for a student. When I told them one responded by saying, 'your tired? I've done .... funerals in the last two weeks.' Then another said, 'well I've done....' and another 'well, I've had .... meetings and ....services....' You get the picture. Someone said to me once that they found it depressing how often clergy brag about breaking the commandment to keep the sabbath.

I know I do the same thing. I over-commit and I forget about good priorities. I'm usually convicted of my sin when I find out that someone was in distress and didn't call me because they knew I was 'busy' and didn't want to 'bother' me.

At the beginning of my talk I remembered the Rev'd Dr. Roy Gellatly who died Dec. 26th. Roy was a retired Presbyterian minister in our community who with his wife audited courses regularly at the university. You'd see him everywhere at community events and he exemplified what we have tried to do in the lecture series which is to provide a place for people from the community and our campuses to come together to discuss matters which affect our common life. He was also always ready for a conversation and never seemed to be rushing to something. I only knew him in retirement so I thought maybe things had been different when he was in active ministry. At the memorial service for him though, when his children spoke about their relationships with him, it was clear that he had had time to spend with them too when they were growing up.

I want to find ways to put a fence around my work and technology that allows me to spend more of that leisurely time with people.