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Fasting is not just abstaining from food – it could be abstaining from bitching, bullying, name calling – it could be fasting from our most common addiction – our major false God – technology.
And we are all addicts – How hard is it for you to resist the tug of the ping when the email or text lands in your inbox?
No one is saying we have to give up technology or go and live in a cave, free of wifi – technology is not the problem – it is our relationship with it that is the problem – how we use it – we have to find freedom in technology not from technology.
Lent is an opportunity to do something about our addictions – a ‘tech detox’ or even some more disciplined approach to technology and thereby create some space for the other – and begin again to experience life first hand.
This would create some down time, some silence, quieten our restless monkey minds, provide space and time to catch up with ourselves – to catch up with our spirits…..
A man set out to explore Africa and he was in a hurry so he hired four Africans to help him.
They set off at speed and raced on for three days.
The third day, the Africans sat down and refused to move.
He told them to get going as he had only two days left finish his journey.
They refused to move.
He couldn’t understand them.
He offered them more money but no good.
Finally he asked them what was going on?
The senior among spoke up, ‘We have moved too quickly
– we have to sit down and give our spirits time to catch up with us.’
It was Blaise Pascal who said that:
“All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
If he were writing today, he might have added, ‘and with all technology turned off!