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Date

May 21st, 2016

Prioritizing Self-Care in a World of Continuous Partial Attention

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/21/2016 - 16:38

The past several weeks have been especially challenging for me. I had two root canals. Fortunately, my kidney stone hasn’t been acting up. My wife started a new job. The pressures in my own job have been overwhelming and even working late hours, I haven’t been able to keep up with the demands. I’m told that if I would just prioritize, everything would be fine. Meanwhile, I try to tune out as much of the bad online news as I can, but it is still there, constantly.

I had to give up my efforts to write a poem a day. I’ve fallen hopelessly behind in an online class I’ve been taking and in a book study group. Another online class that I’ve been looking forward to has just started and I fear I won’t be able to participate at all. There are numerous important blog posts, at least important in my mind for me to write, that are languishing. All of this, as I try to figure out what happens next in my life.

I need to find some time to take care of myself. I find some of that in going to a poetry group I’m part of on Saturday mornings. I made it there this morning after having missed several gatherings. I find some of this in trying to help those around me, the homeless men I talk with, if I’m not in too much of a rush when I step out of my office. I’ve been wanting to help with a community dinner our church puts on, but have rarely gotten a chance to go to.

Last night, I wrapped up things at the office with enough time to only be about fifteen minutes late for the community dinner. My daughter was horseback riding and she and my wife would be home late, so it looked like a good opportunity to stop by and help. Between the dinner and meetings at work, I was offline for about six hours.

To some people, being offline for six hours might not sound like much, but my job is social media. I am always online, always connected. Linda Stone described it well in her 1998 paper, Continuous Partial Attention. She described it as being “a LIVE node on the network”. When a node on the network goes offline for any period of time it causes problems. A redundant or resilient network manages to find ways to adapt, but it causes stresses.

Last night multiple people were angry at me for being offline for being unavailable to them. They said hurtful things to me. In one case I lashed back and said hurtful things in response, which I’m sorry about.

So, I have gone offline again this afternoon. I am spending time praying, thinking, and writing. I may go back online briefly to post this, perhaps to post something about the event I’m supposed to go to this evening or about church in the morning, but I’m likely to remain offline as much as I can until my work calls me back online. I am trying to prioritize self-care in this age of continuous partial attention.

(Categories: )

May 19th

Whom do you Worship?

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 05/19/2016 - 06:00

Listening
to the General Conference
of the United Methodists
and following along
on social media
this week
before Trinity Sunday
I wonder
“Whom do you worship?”

Today
the elephant in the room
is human sexuality
and like the elephant
described by blind men
it sounds very different
depending
on which part of the body
they are touching.

What does our sexuality,
whatever our orientation
or identity may be,
separate us from?
Does it separate us
from God
from our church
from others
and is it our sexuality
or the reaction of others
that does the separating?

Can anything separate us
from the Love of God
which is in Christ Jesus?

Today as I listen
to the General Conference
I wonder,
“What do the delegates worship?”
The past?
The future?
Unity?
Diversity?
Parliamentary procedures?
Tweets or Facebook posts?
Protests?
God?

How do we understand
The Trinity?
The Three in One?
God,
Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer?
How do we understand
all love divine
and the peace that passes
all understanding?

How do we show that love
to those we find incompatible
or that find us incompatible?

(Categories:

)

May 18th

Obedience

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 05/18/2016 - 06:15

Obedience

Yesterday was a long day, starting off with a root canal, followed by a busy day at work, and then stopping by at a Vestry meeting to talk about changes going on in the Episcopal Church in Connecticut. Underlying all of this was the ongoing drama of the United Methodist Church General Conference, where they are struggling with the role of LGBTQ people in the church. At the same time, I am preparing for my final discernment committee meeting where we will be talking about Obedience.

Recently, it has been a struggle to keep up on the various online classes I’m taking, get a poem written every day and find enough time for other writing, family time, prayer, sleep, and exercise. At different times, I have been needing to let one or another slip, and have sought to juggle things as best as I could, as obediently as I could.

In the discernment manual, the section on obedience starts off

The word obedience derives from the Latin word to “hear or listen deeply.” How are the words “obedience” and “listen” related in his or her life?

Who or what are you listening to? It feels like in much of the discussion around LGBTQ people in the Methodist Church, there is very little listening. If there is listening, it is to people with shared opinions, and not people with other opinions, and, I dare say, not to the Holy Spirit, or to the still small voice of God.

As I listen to the proceedings of the UMCGC online, and read the social media accounts, I wonder, where is God in all of this? There are times that one person or another talks about praying for General Conference and the United Methodist Church, but it sounds like an afterthought or an effort to rally supporters to one’s side. Instead, the focus seems to be on voting, and parliamentary procedures designed at getting one’s own way, and not seeking God’s way.

It feels like I am reading one of the Old Testament lessons where God says to a prophet, the people of Israel have abandoned my way, and a prophet is needed. Let me be clear, I am not talking about whether homosexuality is right or wrong, or even, really, about whether LGBTQ people should be allowed to marry or be ordained. I am talking about the underlying issues of praying and listening to God. I am talking about loving the Lord with one’s whole heart and one’s neighbor as oneself.

At vestry, we talked about the diocesan mission committee, about the regional convocations and the ministry network convocation, about ministry networks, and about how it feels like the process of selecting leaders is moving away from a worship of legislative procedures back to worshiping God and trying to listen to God.

I am excited about what is going on in the Episcopal Church in Connecticut. I am grieved by what is going at the United Methodist Church’s General Conference. As I keep praying about it, I think about the Great Awakenings. I think about them, not in terms of the fire and brimstone preaching, but in the social justice they brought. I think about people being drawn to God who had not been accepted as equals, about people of color and women.

What we need now is another great awakening, one that calls for repentance of the sin of not loving our neighbor as ourselves, one that brings in, instead of excludes, those whom the self-righteous think are incompatible with Christianity.

I think the seeds of such an awakening is there, are sprouting and starting to grow, and I pray the whole church, my Methodist friends, my Episcopal friends, my friends in other denominations, those who are different from me in their beliefs and lifestyles, whom I have not gotten to know, whom I have not listened to, who love God deeply in ways I do not yet understand.

(Categories:

Religion

)

May 16th

Moral Decline

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 05/16/2016 - 20:00

She longed for the days when
June Cleaver delivered moral lessons
to Beaver
when she wasn’t doing her needlepoint.

She knew that shopping was good for the economy
even though she didn’t like
the way her husband
paid attention
to some of the new car
advertisements
with scantily dressed women.

She longed for the days when
the economy was strong
and the only threat
was the Godless Communists.

Now, it seemed, everything was Godless.

It was so much easier when
White boys in the suburbs would be boys
and
Black boys in the cities would be thugs,
and the girls who got in trouble
got what they deserved
and didn’t get abortions.

Now, it’s all mixed up
“Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls.”
and the President is black.

It was so much easier when
you could simply tell right from wrong.

Now, people are telling her
that she’s supposed to care
for people different from her.
What if someone
found her darkest secrets?

That’s not even safe,
is it?

(Categories:

Poetry

)

May 15th

Random Stuff

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 05/15/2016 - 20:08

With over three dozen browser tabs open on my computer, I figure it is time to summarize some of what I’ve been reading and close some tabs. I did, similarly just close a bunch of Word documents.

Falcon Ridge Bacteria, Music, and More

Yesterday, someone posted an article to the Falcon Ridge group about festival bracelets: Scientist Confirms That People Who Leave Festival Bracelets On Are Gross.

The article brought a range of comments. “Horse hockey… What nonsense… Real campers don’t worry about it…Sometimes Mental Health trumps physical health… “ I joined in with a couple comments.

The problem with this article is that it is based on the assumption that all bacteria is bad. Tell that to all the Miso, Yoghurt, and Sauerkraut lovers. More importantly, research has shown that certain bacteria in soil helps increase levels of serotonin.

I linked to an article that recently caught my attention, How Dirt Makes You Happy – Antidepressant Microbes In Soil The New Prozac?

I went on to say,

It isn't because I don't want to let go of the happy memories of Falcon Ridge that I keep my Falcon Ridge Bracelet on. I'm just thinking off all those bacteria helping produce serotonin around my wrist singing, "This is my home, this is my only home..."

For those who don’t recognize the quote, it is from the chorus of Gentle Arms of Eden. The first verse ends with, “Till a single cell did jump and hum for joy as though to say…”

As a side note, Acoustic Music Scene posted a little over a month ago, Apply Now for Falcon Ridge/Grassy Hill Emerging Artist Showcase. The deadline is May 20th.

Another side note: five years ago, I went to a social media conference at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. At the dinner, Marlow Cowan performed. He recently passed away and Lee Aase posted about in Memories of Marlow Cowan. You can see me performing as part of that in a video Lee included, at about the 33:29 mark: Cowans' Final Concert at Mayo Clinic. There is something special about performers like the Cowans that seems lost in the twenty first century.

Church Stuff

One email I received talked about an online discussion, May 17 Lessons Learned and Topics that We Still Need to Explore about Multicultural Awareness and Nurturing Cultural Competency as part of a webinar series of Province One of the Episcopal Church in the United States. I won’t be able to join the webinar, but hopefully friends will fill me in on how it goes.

John Burruss, whom I met at the Missional Voices Conference at Virginia Theological Seminary has an interesting blog post up, < a href=http://revjohnb.com/2016/05/church-as-neighborhood-association/> Church as Neighborhood Association?. In it he shares a couple questions: “Can the church create a neighborhood association? How can the church participate in the neighborhood conversation?” Perhaps another way of looking at the question is, if any particular churched closed up and went out of business, or moved out of the community, what sort of impact would that have on the community? I sometimes wonder if it would have almost no impact on many communities, which is a sad thought.

Another thought about churches and communities is the article, More than 100 LGBT Methodist clergy come out before denomination meeting. I haven’t read any official reports about what is happening at the United Methodist General Conference, but comments I’m reading online do not sound very positive hoping the Methodist church will become more supportive of LGBT people. I am sad. There are still a few more days of the conference, so we shall see what happens. As I read through the webpages I have open and follow various links, I come to this: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do and this: A report from Church and Society B. As I read all of this, I think about what has been going on with the Anglican Communion as well.

Other tabs I had open were St. Timothy's Episcopal Church where there is a message from the Interim Rector about Journeys. It goes nicely with the tab that was open next to it, What to Pack for the Camino de Santiago.