Archive - April, 2010

Restlessness: Not Acknowleding Our Limits Can Keep Us From Focusing On Anything Permanent

April 29, 2010 in Ministry-Theology, Therapy-Psychology with 12 Comments


[image by izzymunchted]


Coming to Grips With Our Limits
Something that I have noticed in our culture, and in my own life, is a certain restlessness that often keeps us from truly putting all our energy and focus towards one thing. Instead, we find ourselves with our hands in all sorts of things, and spread way too thin.

I think we do this for a couple of reasons: 1) We are afraid to commit to one thing. Even two things. What if this doesn’t pan out? What if I miss out on what is happening over there? This is often driven by fear. 2) We never truly acknowledge our limitations. We think/and are told we can do anything and everything. But that is not true. We have limits.

A couple of weeks ago I found myself feeling spread way too thin, and at the end of each day, always feeling like there was more I should have done. I sat down to my computer and decided to open up Excel and make a more scheduled calendar for myself so that I could accomplish all that I wanted to do each day. But I kept running into a problem. There were not enough hours in the day. I had hit a limit, and no matter how creatively I arranged the excel sheet, that limit wasn’t budging. Something was going to have to give. It was a humbling experience to come up to my own limits (not the first, nor last time), and I realized I needed to acknowledge them, make changes, and become more focused on a couple of things, rather than a million things.

Unfulfilled Desires
In Ronald Rolheiser’s phenomenal book, The Restless Heart, he says this:

“The Hebrew scriptures, for the main part, understand human nature to be so fashioned that it can never come to full satisfaction because human desires always outstrip a person’s actual accomplishment in this life….

Again, this hints at a reason for our loneliness, namely, our potentialities and desires are much greater than we can ever fulfill in a lifetime. Thus, we always feel somewhat unfulfilled because there are always spots inside of us that are empty….

Much of our rootlessness is caused by a lack of commitment and fidelity. Our lives are too much characterized by our refusal to commit ourselves permanently to anything, whether it be another person, a marriage, a religious vocation, or even just a certain job, a certain neighborhood, or a certain set of values. We all want to hang loose! and consequently our lives are too characterized by infidelity, broken promises, broken words, cheap commitments, and hastily drawn loyalties. It is not surprising we suffer from acute loneliness. (pp. 82, 83, 173)”

When Our Desires Come Into Conflict With Our Limitations
This is where the rubber meets the road. Each one of us has lots of things we want to do with our lives. There are lots of things we want to accomplish each day…but those desires, and our passions can often hit limits. Last year I wrote a post, Limits and Potential: Living Free Within That Tension, which was a reflection on this issue as formulated by Parker Palmer in the book, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. Palmer puts it this way:

“Everything in the universe has a nature, which means limits as well as potentials, a truth well known by people who work daily with the things of the world. Making pottery, for example, involves more than telling the clay what to become. The clay presses back on the potter’s hands, telling her what it can and cannot do–and if she fails to listen, the outcome will be both frail and ungainly. Engineering involves more than telling materials what they must do. If the engineer does not honor the nature of the steel or the wood or the stone, his failure will go beyond aesthetics: the bridge or the building will collapse and put human life in peril.

The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the material you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some of those around you. “Faking it” in the service of high values is no virtue and has nothing to do with vocation. It is an ignorant, sometimes arrogant, attempt to override one’s nature, and it will always fail.”

God has created us with many desires and passions for our lives, but the reality is, is that on this side of heaven, many of them will not come to fruition. That feeling can leave us in a constant state of restlessness, unable to truly commit to anything permanent, therefore, leaving us constantly in a state of not acknowledging our limits, and with an inability to focus on anything for a long period of time.

Disciplining Our Focus

Most of us in fact, never “get it together!” We never get ourselves together. Instead we go through life frustrated and dissipated, letting our restless energies push us in one direction, then in another, never quite able to settle down, to figure out what we want to do, and never quite able to discipline ourselves enough to achieve the ends we were meant to attain.

In the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa wrote about this inability of the human person to “get it together.” He compares the restless and lonely energies in our heart to a current in a stream:

Let us imagine a stream flowing from a spring and branching out at random into different channels. Now so long as it flows this way it will be entirely useless for the cultivation of the soul. Its waters are spread out too much; each single channel is small and meagre, and the water, because of this, hardly moves. But if we could collect these wanderings and widely scattered channels into one single stream, we would have a full and compact waterflow which would be useful for the many needs of life.

So too, I think of the human mind. If it spreads itself out in all directions, constantly flowing out and dispersing to whatever pleases the senses, it will never have any notable force in its progress towards the true Good. (Ronald Rolheiser, The Restless Heart, pp. 19-20)

Technology: Connected, Yet Lonelier Than Ever

April 22, 2010 in Marriage-Family, Ministry-Theology, Technology-Social Media, Therapy-Psychology with 14 Comments


[image by Bidrohi Hirok]


Technological Paradox
One of the glaring paradoxes in my use of technology/social media, is that it has both the ability to make me feel connected and intimate with others, while at the same time feeling isolated, alienated and lonely. I think that is why you have seen me struggle with my use of technology in some of my previous posts (here, here, here, etc.), especially as it relates to human relationships.

Alienation
I’m currently reading The Restless Heart: Finding Our Spiritual Home in Times of Loneliness by Ronald Rolheiser. In chapter three he describes five types of loneliness that we experience (alienation, restlessness, fantasy, rootlessness and psychological depression), and he says this about alienation:

“Everyone is alienated; some more, some less. In extreme cases a person can be so alienated that he or she needs professional help. Usually, though not always, it is simply a question of pain and frustration being present in our lives because of the inadequacy of our interpersonal relationships…There is a powerful loneliness that comes from not being sufficiently connected to the soil, to the bread we eat.” (pp. 45-46)

This idea very much reminds me of a post by John Dyer back in March, How Roasting Coffee Helped Me Understand Technology and Theology. In that post John refers to the “device paradigm” as coined by the philosopher Albert Borgmann. John explains it this way:

As technological development progresses, we take basic life processes like getting food, making heat, and communicating, and we compress those processes down into what Borgmann calls a “device.” A device is a technology that makes the end result of a process available at the press of a button. For example, the process of gathering wood, starting a fire, and tending to it is compressed down into a box which makes heat come out whenever we need it. The process of killing and skinning an animal, planting and harvesting vegetables, preparing and cooking a meal is compressed into a drive through window. The process of going to a concert is compressed into an iPod, and so on.

This is all great except that a sneaky thing begins to happen as devices get smaller and more complex – we can no longer see the processes they perform. Over time, since the processes are hidden from us we stop valuing those processes. Eventually, our values shift to where we only appreciate the end result, and we almost shudder at the thought of going back to the process.

Borgmann argues that to experience the fullness of life we sometimes need to restore what he calls “focal things and practices” – those things that take time and work, but offer a richness not available from a device. For him, the process itself gives meaning and significance to the consummation.

Technology Compresses Our Relationships?
I wonder if technology and social media has compressed our relationships into a process that we can barely recognize?

So on the one hand, there is something cool and convenient with clicking a button online that brings us into contact with a person. But on the other hand, the ease and convenience has disconnected us from the process of relationship making.

Has all the technology relationally disconnected us in a sense, replacing the processes (befriending, getting to know each other, sharing life, etc), where instead we just value the end results (number of followers, blog traffic, etc.)

What we thought would help us feel connected, can actually work against us, making us feel lonely and more disconnected than ever. I have often felt this in my own life, and continue to wrestle with it…and will continue to wrestle with it since I do love technology. And I see this issue becoming more and more prevalent in my work as a therapist and pastor.

Staying Physically Grounded to People
One of the ways that I have tried to work against this paradox is to try and make in person contact with the people that I communicate with online. Connecting in person with those I communicate with online helps me value the relational process and the friendship itself, and can help prevent me from compressing it into an “easy” or “like” button. It keeps me grounded.

Obviously I cannot be friends in person with everyone that I’m friends with online, but I have also come to have different expectations and boundaries with friendships that lack a rootedness in offline life. With these new expectations and boundaries come new insight and understanding, and new depth into the loneliness I sometimes try to misguidedly alleviate through technology.

John Steinbeck, Technology and Alienation(Loneliness)
Rolheiser has a poignant excerpt from the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck that I think summarizes the idea that when we are disconnected to the process through the use of technology, we can sometimes be left feeling lonely:

The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was a part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The drive could not control it—-straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the car, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent the tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled and muzzled him—-goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth. He sat on an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did not know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was nothing. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain it was no more to the driver than to the tractor.

He loved the land nor more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor–its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with blades—-not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row of disks cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by the cut earth. And pulled behind the disks, the harrows combining with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long seeders—-twelve curved iron peens erected a foundry, orgasms set by gears, raping methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumpled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth.

Man ate when they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses. (Excerpt from Grapes of Wrath in Rolheiser’s The Restless Heart, pp. 46-48)

Don’t let technology disconnect you from the relational process…

Overlooking People in Ministry (for number’s sake)

April 19, 2010 in Ministry-Theology, Therapy-Psychology with 11 Comments

Unfortunately, one of the ministry lessons that has been drilled into my head over the years is that numbers matter. Specifically large numbers.

I was rarely asked by my supervisors how an event went, or what stories I could tell about the ministry. It always seemed to be about metrics…things that can be measured in numbers. And I get the need for metrics in ministry, (accountability, direction, etc.), but when did that dictate everything we do?

Usually the question was, “How many people showed up?”

Though I don’t believe numbers to be a great marker of life transformation, it’s hard to move beyond intellectually knowing that. So I would find myself questioning things that didn’t attract a significant number of people.

Fast forward…

Now that I’m a practicing therapist I never get questions about numbers.

First, therapy isn’t measured by numbers, but by change.

Second, there is the assumption in therapy that one person can change and have great affect on an entire system. One partner in a marriage can transform the marriage. One kid in a family can transform the family.

I’m being taught the transforming value of one person upon a system.

I wonder what ministry would look like if we approached the people we serve in the same way? That one person can transform a ministry. One person can transform a city. One person can transform the world.

Instead, I think too often in ministry we are taught the value of numbers at the cost of missing out on opportunities to minister to and disciple that one person.

Are You Having an Affair With Your Social Media Persona?

April 12, 2010 in Marriage-Family, Technology-Social Media, Therapy-Psychology with 9 Comments


[image by Rojer]


One of the things that I have come to understand more clearly about marriage affairs, has come from a result of my continual growth as a therapist working with couples, and as a result of some great insight from some mentors and authors. And this is what I have learned:

Affairs often have less to do with the other person, than how the person feels, or is perceived in that relationship. That person they are having an affair with reflects something back to them that they like. There is something they like that they don’t feel they are getting in their current marriage. Often the person having an affair lacks a clear sense of self, or has little differentiation, therefore they need someone to reflect back to them a sense of self they don’t actually have themselves.

Author and therapist David Schnarch puts it this way:

When we have little differentiation, our identity is constructed out of what’s called a reflected sense of self. We need continual contact, validation, and consensus (or disagreement) from others. This leaves us unable to maintain a clear sense of who we are in shifting or uncertain circumstances. We develop a contingent identity based on a ‘self-in-relationship.’ Because or identity depends on the relationship, we may demand that our partner doesn’t change so that our identity won’t either. (Passionate Marriage, pp. 59)

So what does this have to do with social media?

I am finding that more and more people are finding their sense of self in their online social media persona. It is in their constructed online self that they maintain constant contact with, and in the process, reflects back to them a sense of self.

This is something I struggle with myself, and that is probably why I’m writing this. I caught myself last week asking my wife if she had read a certain blog post I had written. And when she said she hadn’t, I was thinking inside to myself, “Well, it was a good post, and lots of other people read it, and gave me good validation online.” I didn’t say that, but thought that. That’s when I knew I might have a problem.

There is nothing wrong with having an online persona. The problem is when we rely on that persona for our sense of self. The problem is when how we view our sense of self online is more attractive and gratifying to us than how we view our sense of self in our families, marriages and relationships. The problem is when your marriage seems like a lot of hard work, and it’s just easier to hop online, send out tweets, post blogs, and hit the Like button on Facebook versus engaging your spouse.

If you think I’m being overly dramatic, or exaggerating, then I wish you could sit down with me and the couples I work with. This is becoming a huge problem and only growing more.

Sometimes our sense of self is reflected in our work. Or our children. Or maybe even a hobby. Sometimes it’s in the continual feedback and validation that is delivered through an iPhone. There are all kinds of things that we get our sense of self from…but I’m just happening to notice more readily the trend of people being disengaged from their marriages because they like what they see of themselves more online. They like the reflected sense of self in their relationship with social media than in their marriage relationship.

Accidental Discovery: Technology Can Sometimes Be Like Junk Food

April 5, 2010 in Technology-Social Media with 13 Comments


[image by sass_face]


Let me start this post with an example.  I’m the type of person who if I’m going to try and be disciplined about not eating junk food, then it’s much better I tell my wife if we just don’t buy and have junk food in the house, rather than me trying to monitor my intake on sheer discipline.  My failure rate increases exponentially when I know the junk food is accessible.

Sometimes it’s just better if something isn’t around.

That’s how I feel about technology sometimes.  When I lived in Guatemala for 3 months I didn’t have a phone/nor make a phone call in three months.  I didn’t watch TV.  I did send out a weekly email from a cybercafe.  Having limited access and forced boundaries helped me to experience life differently and experience freedom from technological bondage at that period in my life. It’s probably no surprise then that I see that period in my life as one of the most fruitful for me.  I really felt free to be alone with my thoughts, and to explore God’s direction for my life and vocation.  There were few distractions.

So why am I pondering this stuff right now?

Well, my Blackberry Pearl’s operating system finally died last Wednesday, giving me a JUM Error 102 that mockingly glared back at me from my screen.  My phone no longer worked and I felt my world slowly falling apart (okay, I’m being dramatic–but people feel this way when they forget their phone at home accidentally), but what was I going to do?  I couldn’t Twitter from my phone.  What if I needed to make that emergency phone call to my wife somewhere between the 6 miles from my work to our home?  Was I going to survive?  I took my phone immediately to the ATT store and decided that I would just use an old phone that I used to have for my private practice, rather than get a new phone.

Lest you think I’m being disciplined and brave, I actually have an upgrade on a new phone and I’m going to wait for the release of the new iPhone sometime this summer.  So my motives aren’t all pure.

But something happened over the last 5 days.  My trusty Pantech Slate phone and I didn’t really miss my Blackberry. And since I didn’t push any of my emails to my phone, we didn’t miss all the email distractions all day either.  And since I don’t find my new temporary phone that great online, I didn’t log onto Twitter of Facebook or any of the other online distractions that I used to use to keep me company.

I simply used my phone for phone calls and texts.  And wow, let me tell you, the noise was greatly reduced in my life.  And I discovered several things.

  1. I was definitely more present with family and friends.  I wasn’t looking at my phone as each email message came through.  Because there were none.
  2. I felt more focused at work and at home.  I was able to see tasks through, rather than being distracted all the time.
  3. I was able to reflect more thoughtfully on my life, and engage life more in depth.
  4. I found that people didn’t need me as much as I had assumed they did.  No one was out there saying, “Dang, I wish Rhett was tweeting more today.  We really miss him on Twitter.  What a loss for us!”
  5. I found that I had trained the distractions in my life.  They existed because I had allowed for them and created an environment for them. I trained people to expect an email message from me within like 5 minutes of sending it.  Crazy.
  6. I found I was as satisfied checking into Twitter, FB and email about two times a day.

We are all going to have excuses of why this isn’t realistic (my boss expects me to check email every minute–really, he/she does?), or why this is good for me, and not you.

And as I stated early on, I still want the new iPhone coming out this summer.  But if I go that route, I know that I’m going to have to take more drastic measures to reduce the noise in my life, so I can increase the connection with people.  The real, I’m here with you…present with you connection.  Not the we are Twitter and FB friends connection.

Because, honestly–I don’t trust myself with all the technological distractions around.  I need more strict boundaries.

Maybe I don’t push email to my phone anymore?  I don’t know.

I just know that a lot of technology is like junk food.  It feels good at the moment, but at the end of the day I don’t feel great and I slowly find myself more out of shape physically, spiritually, emotionally, etc.