A Note from Dean; Modern Times and Need for Self Exploration

Dear Friends in Christ,

         During the pandemic, Jim and I worshipped on Zoom with Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in NYC. We have friends among the members there and we know Scott Black Johnson, the pastor. We continue to get emails from the church, and I want to share the latest one from Scott as we begin the Church’s observance of Lent:

This coming Sunday marks the first Sunday in the season of Lent. Lent mirrors the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness after his baptism. Lent is an invitation for the faithful to do the same.  
 
And this makes us squirm a bit. Why? Well, it is really quite simple. We are not comfortable with barren places. Consider this statistic: The average American spends 7 hours and 4 minutes a day staring at a screen. Ooph. But yes, I believe it. And, true confessions, I live it.
 
Nicholas Carr, author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book, The Shallows, argues that our growing “addiction” to the Internet is killing our ability to focus on any one thing in a deep way. Our attention span has become a weak muscle, Carr says, distracted by a maze of hyperlinks. 
 
Carr worries that our technology is turning us into “lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.” To resist this drift, humans need to seek out barren places where they linger over important things and deep truths. We need mental yoga that will slowly, but surely, stretch our short attention spans. 
 
Like any new exercise regime, this will take discipline. Have you seen the car commercial where a family drives out in to a wilderness and keeps driving until they get no signal for their cells phones (a reverse of the old Verizon ads)? We all need a little of that. And, here’s the good news: the Christian version of “driving until we get no signal” is Lent. 
 
Lent, my friends, is forty days. Forty days to devote to a spiritual discipline. Set aside 5 minutes every morning to pray. Over the next forty days, take on an act of service.  Over the next forty days, find time for a technology fast. Tuck your devices in a drawer and observe a day of unplugged quiet.  

 Western Church, along with Scott, I invite you to embrace the journey of Lent.  

 See you in Sunday Worship and at Thursday Supper and Bible Study,

 Dean