Slow Time and Dim Light

You know this isn't a new topic for me -- how to retain one's depth in the midst of the ever-present "elsewhere," carried into our homes (and everywhere else) by the Internet.

It isn't a new topic -- but the topic is very rich, and worth another look. Here's a new aspect.

Such A Small Cost

I have struggled to get away from the distractions of "the world." And the world has gotten so very, very good at being distracting.

My business doesn't have a clear stop -- because all my sales and advertising are online, and because my workplace is at home, I can easily drop into work any time of the day. And I do. I even check for updates about current orders multiple times an hour, if I don't deliberately prevent myself.

The news doesn't have a clear stop. Not when a new update could show up anytime.

Emails don't have a clear stop. I mean, sometimes there are no new emails -- but they do come in any minute. I also check those every hour -- unless I deliberately stop myself.

The cost to do these things is so very, very small. Pull the phone out of my pocket, scroll, click a few buttons. Spend maybe 30 seconds, maybe a minute, put it away. And so it is easy to justify -- what am I really losing? Especially if I'm somehow "in-between" things have nothing else to do.

And yet I am aware that this is simply compulsory. I realize there is no benefit to checking every hour, instead of every few hours. And so I resist the compulsion, by deliberately going to the store WITHOUT my phone, or putting it way away in another room -- although that often doesn't work, because I will just "drop in," open my computer, and check -- password, scroll, click, click, done. I justify it to myself "it's such a small cost, what harm?" (The harm is the nurturing of the bad habit, the lack of discipline.)

Anyway, I resist the compulsion, sometimes successfully. And when I do, I find something interesting...

Is It Vacation?

What happens when I successfully put away the "elsewhere," and only look at the things that are at hand?

I feel like I'm on vacation.

There is an effect of being on vacation -- the sense that you are "away" from certain responsibilities. You may think of a project you are planning at home -- but since you're away from home, there's literally nothing you can do about it. So you set the worry down. You remember an unfinished bit of work at the office -- but you're away. You can't do it. So you have to set it down.

And when I put away the phone and the Internet -- even for a few hours -- I can feel my mind setting down the things I am constantly aware of. And there is a space that opens up. Room to breathe.

Perhaps, for someone who is not so drawn to the distractions -- perhaps for someone older, whose habits were all long settled before the ever-present Internet came along -- perhaps for you, this may seem silly. It's hardly like vacation. I'm talking about a few hours.

Yet the relief is palpable. Which means that all the rest of the time -- when I am not "on vacation" like this -- I'm actually at work, at worry, "elsewhere." Just a bit. Only a bit -- but more than enough.

Slow Time

I think of this time as Slow Time. It is simple, and it is accurate. Things in reality -- things nearby -- happen much more slowly.

There may be twenty "news" stories you will hear today. Bam -- bam -- bam, one after another, they can all hit you! And doing that, you've been through more than twenty days. Each news story was someone else's story, and you've heard about all of them. (This is generous -- most people have a "news" story happen to them much more rarely. You've actually been through 20 months, or 5 years -- all in one day!)

But in Slow Time -- well, there's much less to grab you.

I mean, I think yesterday was pretty full of things, as days go. I held a market and chatted with a couple dozen customers. My daughter has gone to a ballet recital, and all my girls went to the pool. My son is pulling carpet off our dining room floor, in preparation for a hardwood finishing. It's hot, and Becky is doing a lot of watering to keep our plants alive. I cut some low-hanging tree limbs, to beautify a grove in my yard.

If you want my news -- that's it.

None of the stories have the bombast of, say, national politics, with the wars and rumors of wars. They don't have the flash and fire of even more local new stories -- no car accident, no theft, no large-scale worrying social changes suggested

Yet it is a day. A real day, lived by a real man. That's exactly how much stuff ACTUALLY happens in a day. That's slow time.

Dim Light

We're not used to this small living. It's boring. It's dull. And so we want things that will be more exciting. The sitcoms where people have more amusing lives. The news, where we see so much flash and fire. And then the lives of our friends in social media, with all the interesting moments concentrated, all in one place, for us to see. The podcasts, where people have more intelligent conversations.

These things all burn with an intensity of concentrated "happening." But reality -- my own really lived life, and yours, too, with the things and people really around us -- is much more dim, and subtle, and modest. It doesn't demand to show us its secrets. It waits. It wants to know that we want to see it. Then it will reveal itself.

THIS is why the ever-present "elsewhere" is such a problem. Every time I would pick up my phone, just to check my favorite news site, or to look to see if I'd earned a little more money, or to see whether someone had sent me an email -- every time I did that, I looked into a flash of light. A quick-burning flame, which often lit up, and gave me something to see. And having done so, reality remained dark.

Do you see what I mean? We have an analogy in the way our eyes respond to light. If we have been in the sun, and we enter a moderately dim room, it will look deeply dark. We cannot see into it, unless we wait for a bit.

Most of reality is dim. Not all of it -- I mean, those news stories are real things, that happen to real people. They happen to us sometimes. But most of my own life, and yours, is dim. When we live our lives constantly looking towards the brightness of the "elsewhere," we won't see our own lives. When we look back at our lives, we will grow impatient -- "why is there nothing interesting here? It's like there's nothing to see, nothing to think about, nothing to look at!" And probably, we will turn back to the brighter light, where we CAN see things.

This escape from the darkness into the brightness ENSURES that we never see the things worth seeing in our own lives. Those things are worth seeing. They are not intense. They are quiet. They are lovely. They are deep. And they are much more elusive. You know, the rewards of our own life, our own homely reality, sometimes just don't show up. They make a silence, and we have to wait through the silence. That's not exciting. That's not interesting.

But just as, if you wait long enough in a dark room, suddenly your eyes shift, and you begin to see shapes where there was darkness, clarity where there was nothing, just so we have to wait in the darkness and dimness of our own reality, and resist the pull of the intensity of "happening" -- and if we do, our eyes will shift, and we will begin to see our own homes, our own days, our own children and parents and friends. Our lives may be in disorder and untidy, if we've neglected them because we've spent so long with eyes unadjusted, and that may tempt us to go back to the "elsewhere."

But this Slow Time has things that the "elsewhere" cannot give. And they are things we need.

Set Down Your Work and Pray

During my honeymoon, I wrote a poem which is not exactly about this truth. But it is closely related, and the most closely related poem I have at hand. I think it's worth revisiting -- especially because today is Sunday.

I hope you enjoy. And God bless us all.

Set down your work and pray.

O how it beckons, calls, and thrums,
Do more, and more, and more, it hums,
No need to stop, for darkness comes
And ending of the day.

Set down your work and pray.

But see the task is here at hand,
The next step in the work we've planned
To fill our Master's just demand
To bear fruit when we may.

Set down your work and pray.

There's still another job to do, 
This crooked world must be made new, 
The broken fixed, the false made true,
The Lord will not delay.

Martha, Martha, cease.
I am here today.
Share with me this peace.
Set down your work and pray.

God Bless You

We really need to put down the phones, get off the Internet for longer stretches of time, and really see into the dim light of our own lives, make our own homes more kept and beautiful, enjoy the talents of our neighbors, and listen to the birds.