Pilgrim Notes

Reflections along the way.

Category: Church Fathers

Building Hope Amidst the Ruins

building hope

In the lonely haunts of forsaken places, the people of God are building hope.

What does building hope look like? It looks like a glimpse, a hint, a promise of God’s coming Shalom. The Lord rescues the children of Israel from a world built and sustained by slavery. He leads them on pilgrimage through the stark barrenness of the wilderness. Far away from the Nile and the bounty of Egyptian food, his people face the threat of no water and no food. Stripped of necessary provisions, the people of God learn that we do not live by bread alone but by “every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3). Continue reading

Multitasking may cost U.S. $650 billion a year

With cell phones, email, ipods, treos and laptops, we’re multitasking more than ever. NY Times points to research suggesting it is an illusion that we can really multitask like we think we can.  Not only is  it causing more accidents, it may actually be slowing down (not speeding up) productivity at work.  Interesting  research. Seems our studies are pointing to an ancient sin the church fathers warned about: sloth (acedia).

Sloth sounds like laziness but it may actually be the result of busyness. If we get too busy, we lose diligence both in work and in spiritual practice. I fear many of us our guilty of sloth. Lord have mercy!

For a more nuanced explanation of sloth, Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung offers a thoughtful reflection on sloth.

Integrity and Integration

For multiple world, our modern/postmodern world has forced many of us to split our lives and now even our identities into multiple slots such as work and home, public and private, inner and outer. Now many thinkers even suggest there is no real person behind the roles we play. I don’t have time to respond to that here, but I disagree.

The nature of personhood is more complex and interconnected than modernism may have realized and the Church Fathers offered a far more nuanced view of the person than the modern idea of the individual. This tendency to create separate identities between home, office, house of faith, hobbies, friends, and the multivarious online social computing personas is dis-integrating. It does tend to make us think there is really no me to me: just another face, another mask. This potentially could lead to many negative and even dangerous manifestations.

Since I believe the person is real, I believe that integration of these various worlds and identities are important. Thus my values at home are the same at work are the same among my friends are the same in the online world. I try to be the same person everywhere (inner and outer).

Thus this blog does not section off technology away from faith away from art or other interests, and that’s why I put the Pope Benedict XVI quote earlier. It captures some of the essence I think the word

Now enough from me. I’ll have to spend more time on this on my Floydville blog sometime. If anyone disagrees, feel free to let me know. 🙂

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