My most-recent piece at CE. Excerpt:
Speed and efficiency are the products of the new technology. We use the new technology, we become speedier and more efficient. We also start valuing speed and efficiency. I know I have, often to the point of frenzied living.
By contrast, what are the inputs of religious life? What do these things have in common: life in the monastery, attending Mass, reading the Bible, meditation, cultivating virtue?
Those things conjure up certain images, and they're not images of speed and efficiency. The images are of slow and deliberate things: hooded monks walking slowly, kneeling, patience, stillness. Calm, not frenzied.
If everything starts to look like a nail to a man with a hammer, how well is he going to deal with a crying newborn? How will the religious life look to a person with email, cell phone, and iPod?
