Blogs
Retreat Reflections: Early Morning
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 02/19/2018 - 06:23Reflections while on a silent retreat at Holy Cross Monastery on the banks of the Hudson River; February 17, 2018. As is often the case when I am travelling, my sleep was fitful, waking up at various times throughout the night.
At around 5:30, a little after my normal rising time during the week, but a little before my normal rising time during the weekend, I arose and went to the bathroom at the end of the hall. Someone noticed me and said, “Good morning” which was followed by what sounded like an embarrassed silence as he quickly left the bathroom.
After my morning ablutions, and a brief check of news and social media online, I headed downstairs and noticed the sun rising over the Hudson River. I headed out into the little cloister and sat on a bench to watch the sunrise. I took a picture which I shared online.
How much should I be online during a silent retreat? I think it was useful to hear, to read, some of the zeitgeist of my friends; mourning the death of a relative and feeling hopeless about America with its divisiveness and violence. Posting a picture of a sunrise from a monastery seemed like an appropriate level of engagement for this morning.
I’ve been thinking a lot about social capital recently, especially in terms of George Soros’ comments about social media companies. See Winston Smith’s Facebook Page for some of my recent thoughts on this.
If we carry Soros’ comments forward, and perhaps add a Marxist interpretation on it, perhaps we need to be thinking about alienation of social capital. We use our social capital and expend emotional energy in our posts online. Social media companies try to monetize some of that capital and energy by selling advertisements. Divisiveness is helpful for social media companies to get a clearer sense of what will sell best to whom. We become alienated from the value of our social capital and emotional energy.
There are various things we could do. We could spend more of our time, social capital, and emotional energy off-line. We could seek workers collectives to share our social capital, like Diaspora. We could let it influence how we act online and offline, by becoming less eloquent, hopeless, or maybe even violent. Or, we could become wiser in how we use our social capital and energy online, making it more effective, and perhaps even less alienating.
I have been experimenting with this in various ways. I did 100 days of gratitude, encouraging my friends to post things they are thankful for. Thinking about the book Help, Thanks, Wow, I tried to do this with days of wonder as well, but societal despair quickly found its way in. I’m trying to think of other ways to approach this.
As I watched the sunrise over the Hudson River, I remember an old saying, “The miracle was not that the bush was not consumed. The miracle was that Moses noticed.” I stopped and noticed the sunrise. Perhaps this will be a retreat of noticing God’s miracles in our daily lives. Perhaps, this is a discussion to have on Facebook.
Perhaps there is also something in this about becoming like a child. Jesus said, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven unless you become like a little child. In what ways are we to be like little children? Is some of it looking with wonder and awe at the miracles of daily life, that too many of us as adults, find little opportunity for?
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. The Feast of St. Brigid.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/01/2018 - 06:26O God, by whose grace your servant Brigid, kindled with the flame of your love, became a burning and a shining light in your Church: Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline, and walk before you as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever. Amen.
Half way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, we celebrate the Feast of St. Brigid today and Candlemas, Groundhog’s Day, and my sister’s birthday tomorrow. Today is also the first of the month, so I start off with the monthly childhood wish for good luck, “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit”.
One old Celtic legend is that St. Brigid was the midwife to Mary when Jesus was born. Exactly how she went from Ireland to Israel is not usually explained in the legend. She is also known as the Patron Saint of Poets so perhaps we should think of her midwifery to Mary as metaphor.
It is a useful metaphor to think about. Who are you helping give birth to something and what are they giving birth to? Who is helping you in a similar manner and what are you giving birth to?
Recently, I got in to a discussion related to this and the idea of spiritual direction. It seems that for many of us, our discernment paths may feel more like we are in long painful labor with midwives assisting us than simply being told what we are supposed to do by a director.
I’m sure that people can spend a lot of time picking apart these metaphors, if that is what they choose, yet the questions remains, what are you giving birth to? Who is assisting you through this process? What are others around you giving birth to? How are you assisting them?
Happy St. Brigid’s Day.
Winston Smith’s Facebook Page
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 01/28/2018 - 06:44Companies earn their profits by exploiting their environment. Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment.
- George Soros, Remarks delivered at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 25, 2018
It is an interesting formulation of an old idea. How has our social environment been exploited? How similar is this to the way the physical environment has been exploited?
It isn’t a new idea. For a long time writers have complained about feeling compelled to give away their content in order to be read. I am doing that here. I put my post up. I share links to it on Facebook and Twitter, and hope someone will read it and respond. All of this becomes content to be used by large social media companies to make money off of advertising. Little, if any of that makes its way to the content creators.
To make things worse, the social media companies’ algorithms favor content that will get the most advertising revenue as opposed to the most trustworthy content, or the content that will best lead to the betterment of society.
Soros goes on to say,
Something very harmful and maybe irreversible is happening to human attention in our digital age. Not just distraction or addiction; social media companies are inducing people to give up their autonomy.
He talks about John Stuart Mill’s “Freedom of Mind”, and suggest the manipulation that is possible when people start losing freedom of mind has “already played an important role in the 2016 US presidential elections”.
He then invokes 1984 and Brave New World
This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined.
If Winston Smith, the hero of 1984 were alive today, instead of a diary, maybe he would be posting on Facebook. This begs the question of how we understand “thought crimes”.
Some of my libertarian friends might equate “thought crimes” with “hate speech” and fight against rules about hate speech. The Ethical Journalism Network provides a useful five point test for hate speech.
They note the tragic consequences of hate speech, especially in the context of the Rwandan genocide. There first point is to consider “The Position or Status of the Speaker”.
journalists and media are regularly trapped by media-savvy and unscrupulous politicians and community leaders. These skilful users of media stir up disputes and discord in support of their own prejudices and bigoted opinions and rely on media to give coverage to their sensational claims and opinions no matter how incendiary they are.
It is interesting to consider not only the position of the speaker, but the medium they are using for speaking. Soros talks about the large social media companies saying,
The internet monopolies have neither the will nor the inclination to protect society against the consequences of their actions. That turns them into a menace and it falls to the regulatory authorities to protect society against them.
There is also the issue of groupthink. Is this a different way in which thought crimes are prosecuted? Around 2010, Eli Pariser coined the phrase “filter bubble” to describe how people social media algorithms group people together around shared ideas. Are there filter bubbles contributing to groupthink?
In 1972, social psychologist Irving Janis coined the phrase “groupthink” which
occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment”
Recently at my alma mater, there have been protests that were sparked when a member of the college football team posted racist material on Facebook.
The student was removed from campus and conservatives might bewail what they consider groupthink in the reaction of the students. Yet for it to be groupthink one would have to argue that protesting racism shows a deterioration of moral judgement.
How should we respond to the exploitation of our social environment? Are there things we can do to help repair our social environment? I pose these questions especially for politicians, religious leaders, and journalists.
Starting a New Semester
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 01/27/2018 - 09:55And so it begins, my second semester of seminary. I am filled with anticipatory excitement and mild trepidation. What will I learn this semester? How will it apply to my life and lives of the communities I’m part of? What opportunities will I have to participate and perhaps even help shape discussions around renewal in a post-establishment church? Or, will the classes be dry presentations of specific viewpoints preparing M.Div students for to take the General Ordination Examination?
I am currently in the Online Certificate of Theological Studies program at Church Divinity School of the Pacific. It is a program for “those people who are seeking spiritual enrichment or who might be thinking about coming to seminary, but want to try out a few classes first.” It is eight courses long, so at the end of this semester, I will be half way through and could finish next January.
As I get a feel for the commitments of the program, in terms of time, and money, I am leaning towards doing the low residency Masters of Divinity program. I could complete that program in the summer of 2021.
I have slowly been growing into my identity as a seminarian; perhaps more precisely described as an online bi-vocational seminarian; working full time while I go to seminary online.
It isn’t clear where this will lead. Will I end up being invited to take the GOEs? Is there an ecclesiastical organization that might consider me for ordination? I do not know. Instead, I’m trying to live in the moment of being a seminarian and sharing my experiences right now.
And right now, these experiences are drawing me closer to God, bringing me joy, and hopefully helping me better serve the communities I am part of.
Martin Luther King Weekend Reflection
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 01/13/2018 - 09:58This Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, I am spending some time reading Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or A Nightmare by James Cone.
In it, he talks about the motto of the AME church: "God our Father, Christ our Redeemer, Man our Brother" and that the AME bishops in 1896 said "When these sentiments are universal in theory and practice then the mission of the distinct colored organization will cease."
In 1960, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke on Meet the Press saying
“I think it is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies that at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours if not the most segregated hours in Christian America”.
For this Martin Luther King, Jr. day, perhaps we can combine the two to say one of the shameful tragedies of our nation is that sentiment that all men and women are our brothers and sisters is still not yet universal in theory and practice.
