Staring at Trees

Most mornings, while silently drinking my cup of coffee or eating my morning breakfast I spend a few minutes staring at a tree outside of a large window in our third-floor apartment. It’s one of those billowing trees that has a huge trunk that branches into a large circular crown of leaves.

I don’t really do anything while I stare at it. I let my mind think about what it wants to think and try to be aware of the present moment. Most mornings, the moment doesn’t last too long as my toddler son usually comes running out of his bedroom to greet me and the day.

I’ve sat in front of it during all four seasons now. In summer it’s a deep green and in winter it branches are grayish brown bending in all directions. In fall it shows off by changing a vibrant spectrum of colors. At the time of writing this, it seemed as if green buds grew over night. I could have sworn they were not there a day ago.

I’m no arborist, so I can’t tell you if it’s a maple, oak, chestnut, or a sycamore tree (I literally just googled “types of big trees” in order to write that former sentence).

What I can tell you, though, is staring at a tree has been scientifically proven to reduce your blood pressure, lower anxiety, and bring a sense of calm. Other studies have shown simply looking at an image of a tree can allow our parasympathetic of the central nervous system to calm our entire body.

In Japan, they have even instituted what is known as Forest Bathing, which is just known as being in the presence of trees, because it increases calm and promotes bodily health.

I don’t know about you, but I sure am open to having less anxiety and more calm in my life.

So, if today is stressful, jam-packed with meetings, emails, and to-do lists; or if this season of life has been overwhelming, overly busy, and difficult; or if you want a moment to connect with your soul, I encourage you to go outside and stare at a tree for a few minutes. Go take a Forest Bath.

I can’t promise it will be magical, but I can promise it will bring a sense of calm. And that in itself can often be life-changing.

Cardinals and Spiritual Awareness

I’m not much a bird watcher, but since elementary school, my favorite bird has been the cardinal. I think it became my favorite bird solely because it was the state bird of Illinois, where I grew up. I try to watch them for a few moments anytime they catch my eye.

While I was in graduate school, a couple of cardinals lived in a tree by the back entrance to seminary building. When I was alone and walking into class, I would try to mimic their call (I’m such a nerd). I’m not much of a bird whistler, but I swear we were communicating. The bird-human synergy was real, I tell you.

The other day as I was walking across campus to my office a cardinal flew within a couple of feet of me. It stopped me in my tracks and, for a split second, I thought it might attack me. I tried to watch it continue its flight. As I did so, another cardinal chased quickly behind it. They were cooing and cawing at one another as if they were friends playing in midair. I paused for a moment to see I could tell where they were going.

Even after they were gone, it was as if their presence was still in the air.

It was the moment after the cardinals flew away when I became most aware of their presence. It was as if in the stillness I was most present to them.

At that moment I caught myself praying, ‘thanks, yes.’ It was the moment I tried to cherish before entering my office to start a day full of meetings.

This experience reminded me of the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19. In the story, Elijah is told to go stand on a mountain and God’s presence would pass by him. The text then reads,

“There was a great so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.”

In the silence is when Elijah became aware of God’s presence. It’s as if Elijah became aware of God’s presence after God’s presence has passed by him. God was in the stillness.

What I love about this story is that awareness and stillness allow the opportunity for a spiritual encounter.

I could have easily been looking down the moment those cardinals flew past me. I could have been texting on my phone, lost in a technological world outside of the world in which I was standing. With tunnel vision, I could have been rushing to catch up on an already busy day.

I could have been unaware of what was present before me and missed the Mystical in the stillness.

Of course, would my day really have been much different if I did miss those cardinals? To be honest, probably not. I’d have one less blog post, but I doubt the day would have been too much different.

It did get me thinking, though, about how much we tend to miss when we are not present and how often we are distracted by other things making us unaware of what’s around us. Someone on their phone unaware of where they’re about to walk into you. Someone stopping in an aisle with their shopping cart unaware that you’re trying to get the can of chickpeas behind them. I see it in others, which probably means it’s rampant in my own life.

If awareness is the beginning of the spiritual life and I often tend to be unaware, then how unspiritual is most of my life? How many Divine encounters am I missing by not being present to what is happening around me?

I once heard a colleague say that “What has your attention, has your affection; what has your affection, has your heart; what has your heart, is what you worship; what you worship, is your God.” He then asked, “What has your attention?”

Is it the present moment? Is it the beauty around you? Is it a technological device in your pocket? Is it a nagging thought or a stress-inducing worry? Is it a notification, an email, or the desire to immediately know how many people liked your post?

Don’t numb yourself from the present moment. Don’t let yourself become unaware. Don’t fill the silence with noise. Don’t miss the birds in flight.

You just might miss an encounter with the Divine in the stillness.

An Analogy for the Church

I wanted to share a simple analogy I have found to be very compelling.

I’m fascinated and slightly fearful of our bodies, as you can read in my former post, Good One God. I’m no doctor nor have any formal education in the health industry, so my assessment might be partially incorrect. Yet, from what I have been told, this is pretty phenomenal.

As you might have learned from a biology lesson in elementary school, our blood cells flow from all parts of our body into the heart where it is pumped into the lungs. Blood needs oxygen to survive, so in the lungs the depleted blood cells are brought back to life and become fully oxygenated.

This re-oxygenated blood is brought back through the heart where it is then pushed with such force that it travels to the extremities of our bodies. This life-filled blood travels to our toes, fingers, legs, muscles, and organs.

This re-oxygenated blood brings oxygen, literal health and life, to parts of our body that desperately needs oxygen, health, and life.

As such blood reaches the margins of our bodies, it very quickly though, becomes de-oxygenated. It gives away its life and health to other parts of the body. So, it must return back to the heart and lungs in order to get oxygen and life.

This oxygenating life-giving rhythm occurs every thirty seconds in our bodies.

I think this is an apt metaphor for our participation and spiritual life within a faith community or church.

Every week, we participate in a rhythm where we gather together, we recite ancient prayers, we sing songs of our hearts, we hear the Gospel proclaimed, we let the truth of ancient Scriptures wash over our lives, we wait in silence for the Divine’s voice, and we partake of the Eucharist or Communion.

Every week, we gather together, in ancient looking cathedrals, converted warehouses, or long-standing sanctuaries, …. to be re-oxygenated. We are drawn back into the center where we can encounter the Divine, our Life, and are then sent out into our own circles to declare this Presence in the world.

Then, we are pumped out, pushed out, sent out to bring God’s Presence and Love to all who need it. We are scattered from our sacred sanctuaries to the oft-forgotten margins where people are longing for oxygen, for life, for healing, for freedom, for good news, and for love.

We are not the Oxygen, of course. We are the vessels for the Oxygen.

We are not the Life. We are conduits for the Life.

I need this rhythm. I crave this rhythm, actually.

I don’t know about you, but after a typical week, I can honestly say I need to be re-oxygenated. I become depleted quite quickly. I need to return to the heart, to the Center, to be reminded of truths that can revive my soul.

I crave this rhythm because something mysterious happens. Every time I return the center, to the heart, something happens within me. My soul is refreshed, restored, transformed, even when I don’t feel it on a Sunday. I can’t always explain how it happens, but I can say it does happen.

I recognize that some of us haven’t experienced such a re-oxygenating community, though.

Perhaps instead of being a place that brings life, we have been a part of communities that suck oxygen and life right out of us. Maybe it was life-giving for a season and then it seemed as if the rug was pulled out from under you. Now, you’ve been left out, burnt out, depleted, abandoned, forgotten, and left on the margins. I’ve been there, too.

But, be encouraged. The extremities, such as our feet and hands, don’t need to go to the heart to find true oxygen and life. Oxygen is brought to them. Life finds them.

The same is true for you. You will be found. Life and Oxygen will find you. God isn’t only found in a church sanctuary but is as close to you as your very breath.

This is also why I love the song “You Will be Found” from the musical, Dear Evan Hansen. Tears. Every time I hear it.

When you discover God has found you, that moment will be the most oxygen-rich breathe you’ll ever take for Life has found you and filled you.

A Digital Declutter: Decisions

What does it finally feel like to enter back into the world of social media after a 40-day break?

Welp, to be honest, I don’t think most people realized I was gone. It also appears I didn’t miss much of anything (Sorry to that friend who thinks I might have missed something). If I really think about it, it makes sense. With over 1000 friends on Facebook, how many of them do I actually know are active, taking a break, never posting, or posting constantly? If one of my friends left, I probably wouldn’t notice either.

Logging into Facebook I had a lot of missed ‘happy birthday’ notifications. Within minutes, I caught myself getting sucked back into numbly scrolling as well as a desire to log back into it a few minutes after I closed the window. After not checking Facebook for weeks, I checked it seven times within the first hour of logging back into it. I also got pretty riled up after checking one of the clergy groups I’m a member of where there's an endless stream theological debates.

I think being on Facebook for a little over 12 years is more than enough time to be on Facebook for one lifetime. Some of my Facebook friends are actually better as memories than friends and being off Facebook compels me to keep in touch with friends more regularly. I’ve come to think that life is actually better without Facebook.

Twitter welcomed me back with three new followers all of whom I think are spam. One is from India, one has “Jesus” in his handle, and the final one is smoking weed in his avatar. I received two likes on a post the day I left. I didn’t even want to start scrolling and try to read people’s 280 characters. I knew I would get lost in a rabbit hole that would just anger me.

Although I love the speed of Twitter, the ability to connect quickly with others, and to almost instantaneously know of key events as they’re happening, I don’t think it’s a tool that truly adds value to my life. I’m thinking I might call it quits with Twitter, too.

When it came to Instagram, I came back to 5 spam follow requests and a bunch of hearts for my previous posts. Within seconds, I was annoyed at the advertisements every 4-5 posts. To be honest, that will be the deciding factor for me if I keep the app. I also think I am going to mute everyone’s Insta-story, except for my wife’s because she puts up the best videos of our kids and I’m clearly biased.

So, at the moment, I’m going to keep it (I do need to use it for work) as I enjoy seeing pictures of friends and family from afar. Because of this, though, I have unfollowed all businesses, celebrities, brands, and some acquaintances in hopes of streamlining my experience.

I deleted over a dozen apps from my phone for this 40-day declutter and now have no intention of re-downloading them. At present, I have 33 apps on my phone, which is much less than I once had. I’d prefer to delete more, however Apple won’t allow 11 apps too be deleted. I have really enjoyed using my phone less. And, I plan to keep using BlockSite as a way to keep myself productive at work and avoid the temptation to hop on social media or infotainment sites while I could be getting work done.

I’ll also keep up with my blogging and writing as this has given me great joy. To be honest, since I have been less distracted with social media and being tethered to my phone, it’s as if I have become aware of life around me and creating content is much easier and enjoyable.  

I’m trading in likes, retweets, followers, and the pursuit of building a platform for, what I hope will be, more easeful living, better face-to-face relationships, and better productivity in life and work. I’m convinced, though, that it is worth it.

A Digital Declutter: Lenten Log Off

As I have blogged previously (and elsewhere) I am starting to question whether social media is good for us and if social media and technology adds value to my life, at least enough value to keep it. So, during the 40 days of Lent, I decided to do a “Digital Declutter” based off of the challenge Cal Newport gives in his book.

I deleted all optional technology from my phone, which included all social media, news, email, shopping, etc. For me, this included the following apps on my phone: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, New York Times, News, Gmail, Marco Polo, Amazon, YouTube, Yelp, Trulia, and a handful of others that I rarely used. I also set up blockers on my browser to include all new, social media, and any other “infotainment” sites.

With Lent’s conclusion, I thought I’d share some reactions from my 40-day social media declutter experiment.

Within the first few days, I found myself trying to go to particular sites or constantly refreshing my email. I’d open my phone only to find the app gone and on my laptop, the website blocker would show me a fun reminder. See the pictures to the side.

After a few days, I noticed the amount of time I use my phone drastically dropped from two or three hours a day to, on average, an hour. Some days I have used it as little as eight minutes. I even got to the point where I decided to leave my phone at home while my family went out to run errands.

Not checking any news sites has meant I’m a bit out of the loop and I have come to embrace that. Luckily, family members and friends have informed me of big events happening in the world. The biggest events have been the burning of Notre-Dame, the release of the Mueller report, the election of Chicago’s new mayor, and the college admissions scandal. All of this I learned from friends or coworkers, but each time had to ask them to give me more details.

Without the news and Twitter, I have become less irritated at Trump and less frustrated at politics. It’s been vastly refreshing. Without email on my phone, I don’t feel the need to always respond and be ‘on the clock.’ When I’m home, I’m home and not seeing if any new emails come in. I’ve also tried to only check email a couple of times a day while at work and I will share more about that in future posts.

And, when I come up with a funny tweet or a sentence that I think would get a lot of likes on Facebook, I just tell someone instead. Or laugh to myself about it. In all honesty, I feel as if there is less noise in my world. And, I don’t fear I’m missing out on anything. I think my so-called missing out is actually enabling me to be fully present and aware to people around me, especially my wife and sons.

It’s as if social media has become an obligation that takes up more of our time and mental energy than we realize. And, it seems as if we never really thought through the ramifications of saying “yes” to initially signing up.

I want to use technology rather than have technology use me.

I want to be face-to-face with people rather than face-to-phone around people.

I want to be aware rather than addicted to impersonal technology.

I want to be mindful rather than mindless scrolling.

In a future post, I’ll share a bit more about how it felt to log back onto social media and the decisions I’ve made about ending my relationship with social media.

A Digitial Declutter: The Background

Join me for a trip down social media memory lane.

First, there was Friendster (does anyone else remember that?). I’m pretty sure the site consisted of making a basic profile and finding your friends’ profiles. There was also Xanga, which was one of the first blogging sites. Then came MySpace and the stress of choosing your Top 8.

Once they tanked, though, Facebook came along, which I couldn’t join until I was in graduate school with a .edu email address. All we could do was to speak about ourselves in the third person and ‘poked’ people.

Then Instagram hit the scene and all you could do was post pictures with really bad filters. There were no stories, no DMs, no comments, no ads, and no ownership by Facebook. At about the same time, I signed up for Twitter before hashtags became popular.

Things started to snowball. We moved to Tumblr, Reddit, YouTube, Periscope, Snapchat, Vero (which was popular for a weekend), KIK, Yik Yak, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Medium, and Marco Polo. I’m sure there are countless others that young people are using which I know nothing about.  

It’s barely been 10 years since social media hit the scene. The majority of my life, I didn’t use nor had any need for social media. I had many other forms of media and plenty of space to be social without the use of technology.

But there’s been a shift in how we use and react to social media.

We’re tethered to our devices. Perhaps you could say we are enslaved to them like the podcast episode, A Cellular Exodus, does. Most of us pick up our phones 6-7 times an hour with an average of over four hours using our phones. Our bodies now experience phantom vibrations falsely thinking we got a notification. We feel an underlying sense of anxiety when we forget our phones at home or if we don’t get an immediate reply to our post.

Places where we once went to people watch (airports or parks for instance) we only watch our phones. If you take a moment to notice, we are all looking down at our phones. At intermission of a theatrical performance, I attended recently, I looked around and the majority of people were looking at their phones. As I walk across the campus at work, most of our students are looking down. When going out to dinner, countless kids are sitting with their families watching an iPad as their parents talk.

Now that technology and social media has been out long enough, we are finally starting to the positive and negative impacts of if. Studies are now conclusively showing that the more people use social media, the less happy they are, the more anxious they are, and the more depressed they become.

Personally, I’ve been questioning the value of social media. Is the time spent on it worth it? Do it significantly add value to my life? Is it keeping me from being productive in any other area? Am I a better human because of it? Am I aware of how social media makes me feel while I am using it? Or am I caught in a trap of mindless scrolling and numbing liking and retweeting?

In the coming few posts, I’ll be sharing about my 40-day “Digitial Declutter” from all social media and optional technologies, how it has impacted my personal and professional life, and what changes I will be making in the weeks ahead.

Stay tuned for what’s next. And if you’re still using social media, go ahead and like, share, or retweet it.

Reconnecting Ligaments

Do you know what makes me throw up a little in my mouth? Religious cliches.

Here’s one that gets my insides gurgling: “Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship.”

Now, I realize some people love religious cliches. They can be a good mnemonic device or a way to understand complex theological themes. But for me, most religious cliches overly simplify the Profound and the Divine Mystery. Similar to metaphors they can be helpful at first, but they always break down.

For a season, I attended a very contemporary seeker-sensitive evangelical megachurch that loved this cliche. One sermon series was on the negative aspects of religion in comparison with the positive aspects of Christianity as a relationship.

I remember that the preacher translated and defined “religion” as bondage. He surmised that all “religious” Christians and other religions brought spiritual bondage, but true Christianity because it was a relationship instead of a religion, brought spiritual freedom. Religion, then, was a bunch of rules one had to obey. Christianity, though, was a relationship developed by love.

Of course, I get the sentiment of the above cliche. Christianity does promote a personal and knowable God, union with the Divine, and personal spiritual transformation. So, yes there’s a relational element to the Christian religion. Moreover, God is also relationship, as the doctrine of the Trinity teaches.

Additionally, I see that throughout Scripture there were religious leaders who followed the rules and the law but missed the relational opportunity with the Divine. They lived a religious life for the wrong reasons, following rules but missing God’s Presence.

But, all cliches breaks down. Christianity is a religion. At its worst, Christianity as a religion has put a lot of people in bondage; spiritually and emotionally. At its best, Christianity as a religion has connected people to the Divine. It is also relational. As are other religions.

Such a cliche is one way to think of religion. Recently, I was reminded of another way to think about religion.

I have been slowing working my way through Fr. Richard Rohr’s new book, The Universal Christ (Seriously, go buy this book. It is utterly profound, powerful, and a game changer in the way we understand the Christ). He notes that religion comes from religio, which means to re-ligament or reconnect. Isn’t the image of religion as reconnecting ligaments bloody, bodily, and powerful?

In the book, he describes the essential function of religion is to radically connect us with every thing and every one. Religion then, specifically the Christian religion, is to re-ligament or reconnect us, to the Divine. Additionally, Christianity helps us to be radically connected to all of creation, to other people, and to ourselves.

I love this view of religion. And maybe this is why Christianity is even more important today.

I don’t know if people in our culture feel as if they are in some sort of spiritual bondage and need to find freedom. I assume most won’t respond positively to religious cliches, tracts, and answers to questions they aren’t actually asking.

However, I do think many people in our culture crave personal and spiritual connection, desire to be a part of something bigger than themselves, are dissatisfied with the false promises of individualistic pursuits, want to experience the beauty of a healthy creation, and hope to be deeply known and loved no matter the risk.

For instance, we live in an age where we have countless devices, technologies, and platforms whose goal it is to connect and reconnect us with others. Studies are now showing, though, that the more time we spend on social media platforms, designed to ‘connect’ us, the more lonely, anxious, depressed, and unhappy we become. The tools designed to connect us have actually become barriers to developing deep relationships and a fulfilling life.

This is why I think Christianity is exactly what we need.

We need a tradition that radically reconnects and re-ligaments us to every one and every thing, as Fr. Rohr says.

We need a faith that connects us with the Divine, with each other, with creation, and with our very souls.

I guess you could say we really need a religion void of cliches but one that radically and mysteriously reconnects ligaments.