Hey there!
Today’s Reading:
Romans 8:35-39
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I have been listening to many of the TED talks these days. Have you heard of these? TED goes out looking for “ideas worth spreading.” They look for riveting people with good ideas and then ask them to take up to 15 minutes with their ideas. They are brilliant! There is quite the array of talks and all of them get my brain working in different ways. You can podcast the talks or watch the videos at www.ted.com. One of my favorites so far is this one….
http://www.ted.com/talks/amber_case_we_are_all_cyborgs_now.html
In this talk, Amber Case makes the case that in some form we are all becoming cyborgs because of our use of technology. I know, it sounds weird but its actually 8 minutes of coolness. By extending ourselves through cell phones and computers we are extening our social capacity through our minds she argues. This is genius! I never thought about it this way! And technology can really be useful as long as we use this connection well. We are connecting on levels we never thought we ever could.
But the downside is what we are particularly seeing in teenagers. When we get to pause and be still and listen to ourselves…that’s when we create our self or our identity. Then we should be projecting what she calls our “second self” into the universe. BUT if we are constantly checking our phones and/or facebook, how do we create a first identity in order to project our second self? This could be a big issue! The problem is that we aren’t actually getting moments in time where we aren’t plugged in in some way and we need these moments of silence, stillness, and meditation to be our true selves.
Wow! What a talk! Here is a fantastic argument to unplug every once in a while! Yes, that means when you hop on your bike for your first spring ride, maybe we shouldn’t take our phone or at least don’t answer it or check in with it (unless there is an emergency). Or perhaps we we are out in the first spring gardening time, we leave our phones inside. Or perhaps for our days off we should actually turn off the phone….Now, every piece of my being is saying, “But what if someone needs me!?” “What if I need them?” On the other hand I have faith that I will get the information I need when I need it. And somehow the world keeps turning at a rapid pace and I find myself a bit more in each rotation.
Our scripture today reminds us that no matter what God is present…nothing can separate…even our technology. Somehow God will get across and at the same time maybe we could aid that process by looking God or intentionally connecting with God every once in a while.
What do you think?
Peace,
Court
Living in Violet 
I love TED talk but haven’t seen the one you mentioned–I’ll have to watch it! Eric and I have reflected on this some and decided to give up internet TV for Lent (and maybe forever) because we felt that it was leading us to check out instead of check in. I also love the connection to the Romans 8 passage, which was one of the first (and, I’ll admit, few) pieces of scripture I ever memorized.