Becoming Peace
This time of year we are staying up late regularly. Whether it is watching Christmas movies or football games…
Becoming Hope
We spent Thanksgiving in Missouri. We got to see family and long time friends. Our trip began with sunny warm weather where we were throwing the football around outside in shorts and t-shirts…let’s be honest, my kids only wear shorts…so this doesn’t seem to properly express the beauty and warmth of a Kansas City fall day…and then not many days later, our trip ended with 3 inches of snow in St. Louis. It was a beautiful time with people we love.
Between that first and last day, there were a lot of dark overcast days. It is inevitable this time of year, especially in the midwest.
The End of Something
Last night I was laying down with my son Keating and we were both reading.
Keating said, “can you believe I am on page 400 in my book?”
First off, I don’t know if I have ever read a 400 page book…but heres to future goals.
So I asked back, “how much do you have left?”
He replied with a sound of sadness in his voice, “30 pages…but I don’t want it to end.”
I get it. There is something about reading an incredible book, or watching a great film, or TV series, or experiencing an unbelievable meal, or indescribable vacation…you don’t want it to end.
Tension During The Holidays
In our house, we experience “tension” this time of year. This tension arises because it’s early November. We’ve just had Halloween, All Saints’ Day, and Veterans Day. We still have pumpkins everywhere, cinnamon muffins, and lovely fall décor…and yet four-fifths of my family (including Brittany, our dog) are ready to barrel toward Christmas.
I am not in the majority here.
As a kid, we often went to Colorado for Thanksgiving, packing all our Christmas albums. On the way out, we’d listen to all sorts of different music. But on the way back? It was Christmas music all the way. It was so ingrained in me to wait—Santa passing by Macy’s on Thanksgiving morning was the official green light for Christmas. To skip over Thanksgiving feels like bypassing a rich tradition that deserves its moment.
Half The Conversation
Several years ago, Sarah and I shared one account for our phones. That way we could share music and pictures and everything else stored on our phones…to be honest, we didn’t realize almost two decades ago that all of our life would be on our phones…that didn’t even occur to us.
The problem with sharing one account is, occasionally, for no reason we completely understood, some of our texts, calendars, emails and other things would show up on the other persons phone without going through a series of menu options to change that or stop it from happening.
We maybe didn’t send the initial text or send the initial email or initial calendar invite and yet, we had this bit of information that was intended for someone else and we were seriously confused.
Have you ever tried to understand a conversation with only reading one side of it?
Whether it is sitting there listening to someone talk on their phone, but have no idea what the person on the other end is saying.
It is very confusing.
Split Screens
In 2015, the Kansas City Royals went to the world series and won. That was the last time they played in the post season. Until this year.
In 2017, the Kansas City Chiefs went 4 and 0 to start their season. Despite their post season success, that was the last time they started so strong. Until this year.
Tonight, the Chiefs and the Royals are playing at the same time.
For those of us from Kansas City…our attention will be divided. We will all spend an evening with split screens.
But no matter if you are from KC or not, we live in a world that is so distracted, attention divided between so many things. Most of our “time saving” devices and efficiency technology has actually caused us to waste more time in meaningless distractions and never give anything our full attention.
As I’m writing this, my computer keeps giving me notifications about “tips” to use it better, calendar and news alerts, and my phone updates me about weather, amazon deliveries, and my sons’ grades at school.
And…I have most of my notifications and updates always turned off because I get easily distracted.
I think we are likely getting so used to distractions, that many of us rarely have times when we aren’t staring at a screen (or multiple ones at the same time), multitasking, thinking about other concerns and worries, and giving nothing our full attention. This is often knowingly or unknowingly done to make ourselves feel productive, accomplished, happy, fulfilled…or maybe disconnected or distracted from reality or formulate our own reality.
As C.S. Lewis says,
“Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
We are all living with split screens.