Do You Have The Time?

What rules us? The desert mothers and fathers asked this question at the dawn of the Christian religion. They felt that the current society was a “shipwreck”, and they wanted to get out as quickly as possible in order to worship God, in order to be true to themselves – in short, in order to preserve their sanity.

The culture of today is one of instant gratification – of email (or, if you’re like me, and that sometimes isn’t quick enough for you, of instant messaging) and cellphones, of having the world at your fingertips at any time, day or night.

I sometimes I have to remind myself that before all of these modern inventions, people survived – even thrived – and stayed connected to people, even after having to wait three weeks for a letter to arrive by a pony. I sometimes fret when certain emails aren’t answered after three hours.

I know it’s easy to mourn for some sort of golden age in the past, when things were simpler. But I truly think this hits at the heart of Christianity today. How do we spend our time? I ask again, what rules us? I wonder if we can truly get out of this fast-paced Mc-Culture, or if all I can do is complain about it. Have we backed ourselves into a corner out of which there is no escape? I, for one, cannot imagine fasting from something truly necessary – email. What would I do when I came back to my computer and saw all of those emails of substance that had been left unanswered?

Everyone loves to get real mail. The thought of it just makes me smile. But that takes way too much time…getting the card, writing the words, buying the stamps, and then waiting for the blasted thing to arrive, not even knowing for sure if it ever gets there (unless we get a reply, which would take doubly long to return to us).

I don’t want to romanticize the world behind us, but I don’t want to get caught up in the world that surrounds us, one that demands all of our time. That being said, I’ve spent too much time writing this entry. I need to go eat. I don’t have any time…