Pods and Phones (Rob Gieselmann, March 18, 2007)

If Moses had owned an iPod, he’d never have heard God. If his ears had been plugged with Leonard Skynard or Hootie and the Blowfish – or even Teleman – Moses would have passed right by the bush burning, he would never have said so cleverly, “why look, a bush burning but not burning up.”

Had Moses passed the bush by, he never would have challenged Pharoah, freed the Hebrew slaves, and led them to the Promised Land.

It seems fortunate, then, that the iPod – and for that matter -- the cell phone, weren’t invented 3500 years ago.

We aren’t so lucky! Both are not only with us, they are actually God-like –

ubiquitous, for they are

everywhere at once.

all-seeing, -- the phone

doubles as a camera,

and all-knowing, witness the iPod can recall not only music and movies, but all knowledge, as well.

There are some 600 million human ears in the United States, and I’m willing to bet that, at any one time, 100 million of them are plugged. iPods and cell phones. People are listening, but, of-course, the real question is: are they listening?

Cell phones. Do you remember the good old days, when a telephone rang like a telephone? Phones don’t ring anymore. Electronic tunes or noises alert you to your call. Bach or Beethoven or Mozart. The Beetles or Elvis or the Rolling Stones. You can choose the song, Man Eater, by Nelly Furtado. Or, the Three Stooges theme song, or Inspector Gadget, or even George Carlin doing his stand-up routine. You can download mosquitoes buzzing, a tribe chanting and dancing, and even Gollum from Lord of the Rings. “Someone is trying to reach you.”

Don’t tell me Tchaikovsky isn’t rolling over in his grave, the way your cell phone plays the 1812 Overture.

But it isn’t the ring tones that bother me, it is the phone use. The constant use, the need for electronic stimulation all the time. People hike with their phones in the Headlands. I overheard one young woman shout into her phone, “No, don’t put those pink shoes in the box . . .” I’m sure that valuable instruction was worth interrupting Mother Nature.

Which, of-course, reminds me of the line in the Color Purple that goes something like this: “I think it pisses God off when you walk past the color purple in a field somewhere, and don’t notice.”

It’s not just that people don’t notice, plugging your ears can be dangerous. That’s why states pass laws against driving and talking. New York wants to limit iPod use. Two young men, it seems, died listening to iPods when they stepped off curbs and into oncoming traffic.

Dangerous, indeed, but I’m poking fun at all this for another reason: your spiritual health. And not just iPods or cell phones, but noise. Constant noise.

Radios in cars, the television as white noise, the Today Show over breakfast. What did you listen to this morning as you got ready for church? All of this says loudly, “we can’t handle silence.”

We can’t stand to be alone. And yet, solitude – not loneliness, but solitude – the quiet space for the heart – is a human imperative. Empty space.

Like a plant in a pot needs room for root growth, you and I need space for growth. But we fill our lives with the inane, the superficial. One must ask, “why?” Do we like the music? Well, maybe – but so much of it?

I am convinced that filling our lives with noise means we won’t have to hear. Really hear, our hearts and our God. The fears and questions lurking below the surface.

Not hearing means you don’t have to face facts: you’re scared, or you’re not who you want to be, or think you are, or think you should be.

That was Tyler’s problem. Tyler is the protagonist in Elizabeth Strout’s novel, Abide with Me.

Tyler’s wife died. He is raising their two children himself, and get this – he is a minister. I promise, I did not know this before I read the book.

Tyler wanted life to be the same after his wife died, minus one person. He kept trying to live the same way. But life wasn’t the same.

Tyler gets shocked into reality suddenly through crisis, mostly when he realizes that his daughter is paying the price of his intransigence. She is in grade school. Since her mother died, she has become antisocial, silent and brooding.

Eventually, Tyler gets religion, no pun intended; he has an epiphany, a breakthrough. Nobody else has the epiphany,

so he preaches it. He preaches his epiphany.

First, he tells his confused congregation, we have learned through science that man is no longer the center of the universe. “We are far less important than we thought we were,” he says, “and we are far, far more important than we think we are.”

Science doesn’t deliver all – there is mystery. Mystery accessed not by rational thought, but in other ways. “It is your job,” he says, “your honor, your birthright, to bear the burden of this mystery.”

Mystery. Who we are, and why we are here. You are tasked with the burden to figure it out – you won’t succeed, nobody has, at least not fully, but to be fully human, you must try.

Your soul ever stretching, ever reaching outside of itself to discover itself. And to discover God. Discovering requires space.

But we fill space as holes with concrete.

Our souls have become old furniture stores, junk fills every nook, every cranny and corner. Solitude scares us, just like it scared Tyler.

St. Patrick thrived in the magical space of solitude. He was born in England, not Ireland. His father was a deacon, a local official, and his grandfather was a priest.

When he was a teenager, by his own admission, he “knew not the true God.”

Irish pirates captured the young Patrick. They enslaved him for six years. During those years, he tended herds, almost certainly by himself, in solitude, alone without person or book. Solitude dug holes in him that he never would have had otherwise.

Solitude does that, you know. As you face yourself candidly, as you appraise yourself rightly, as you become honest with yourself, when you can no longer hide behind a cell phone or an iPod. Solitude makes an honest man of you, if you will, and it did so with Patrick, just like it did with Moses.

After six long years, Patrick dreamed he would escape, and he did. He returned to England, became a priest, and eventually returned to the isle of his loneliness. And helped renew a nation and people.

When I sit still at night, I can hear my heartbeat. Strong, my whole chest thumps, thump, thump. And I suppose that is what I’m talking about, listening to your heartbeat.

In the end, this all has so little to do with iPods and cell phones, and everything to do with all of the noise in our lives. Tyler in Abide With Me, says, it is your job, your honor, your birthright to bear the burden of mystery.

Bearing that burden is what it means to be human, to sense and touch God. I’m looking for a life where I can sit on the porch on a Sunday afternoon, feet dangling from the big swing, yakking with people as they walk by, looking at the birds, hanging in the air – And wondering at it all, wondering at the marvel of it all, and pondering not just in my head, but here, in my heart, at my place in this Garden, and wondering once again, at my place in this universe.

Isn’t that salvation?

Amen.

Copyright 2007