Replacing conversation with connection

Working with my friend Philip at StarbucksWe live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection……In the silence of connection, people are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people — carefully kept at bay. We can’t get enough of one another if we can use technology to keep one another at distances we can control: not too close, not too far, just right.

Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology. And the move from conversation to connection is part of this. But it’s a process in which we shortchange ourselves. Worse, it seems that over time we stop caring, we forget that there is a difference. We are tempted to think that our little “sips” of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don’t. E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places — in politics, commerce, romance and friendship. But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation.

We expect more from technology and less from one another and seem increasingly drawn to technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship……When people are alone, even for a few moments, they fidget and reach for a device. Here connection works like a symptom, not a cure, and our constant, reflexive impulse to connect shapes a new way of being.

Sherry Turkle, “The Flight from Conversation”, New York Times, April 21, 2012

Always learning

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn;

that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; 

that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

Ralph Waldo Emerson,  Circles

Keeping a dimension of unknown

A sense of Mystery can take us beyond disappointment and judgment to a place of expectancy. It opens in us an attitude of listening and respect. If everyone has in them the dimension of the unknown, possibility is present at all times. . . . Knowing this enables us to listen to life from the place in us that is Mystery also. Mystery requires that we relinquish an endless search for answers and become willing to not understand. . . . Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years, I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.

Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings

Present for a new day

This morning, at dawn, I understand that this new day does not resemble any other, that this morning is unique.  We often think that we store away certain mornings for later.  But it is impossible.  Each morning is special, unique.  My friend, how do you find this morning?  It is here for the first time in our lives?  Is it the repetition of a past morning?  My friend, when we are not present, mornings repeat themselves.  If we are present in front of life, each morning is a new space, a new time. 
Thich Nhat Hanh, in Call Me By My True Names

When we live best

But the silence in the mind is when we live best, within
listening distance of the silence we call God. This is the deep
calling to deep of the psalm-writer, the bottomless ocean.
We launch the armada of
our thoughts on, never arriving.

It is a presence, then,
whose margins are our margins;
that calls us out over our own fathoms. What to do but draw a little nearer to
such ubiquity by remaining still?

R.S Thomas

Blessed by everything we meet

 

The more alert we become to the blessings that flow into us from everything we touch,

the more our own touch will bring blessing.

Br. David Stendl-Rast