Questions, Questions...I've Got Questions

3,298...

If this were Jeopardy, the category would be titled “Biblical numbers”. The answer would be “What is the number of questions found in the King James Version of the Bible?”

3,298 questions...

The Book of Job is the stand out winner in the question contest with 329. (Surprise, surprise!) Jeremiah has 195 questions, Isaiah, 190, Psalms, 163, 1 Samuel, 157, and Genesis, 149. The gospels contain 630 questions, with Matthew the winner at 177, followed by John at 167, Luke close behind at 165 and Mark trailing with 121.*

Depending on the translation and whether you include the apocryphal/deuterocanonical books in your count, the total number of questions in the Bible may vary, but there is no getting away from the fact that questions and questioning are very biblical. Some of the questions are voiced by the writer of a particular book, others come from the mouth of God, the Yahweh of the Old Testament, the Jesus of the New. It would appear that it is fine with God that we ask Him questions, but it is also expected that we should be fine with God asking us questions as well. Read any of the chapters at the end of the Book of Job. God asks a head-spinning number of questions of Job, more than the many questions that Job had asked God in the early chapters of the book. Just count the question marks in Chapter 36, then count the question marks in Chapters 6 and 7. Lots of questions. Fortunately for Job, this mutual questioning ends well. God takes issue with the way Job's friends spoke about God, but God appears to be fine with all of Job's questioning, saying to Job's friends, “And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:8b) Job gets a shout out from the Lord God Himself despite his questioning or, perhaps, because of his questioning. Good news for us as well as for Job: Questioning, if done correctly – face-to-face, before God and toward God – counts as prayer.**

This strange Lenten series has been about asking questions in a Luddite-like manner. The basic questions have been focused on what we let into our lives in the way of technology or even just “stuff” that clutters up our closets or our minds. Some of these questions were: For each new technology - “machine” - we let into our lives, are we losing something valuable, something of quality that the “old way” of doing it provided? How can this loss be avoided? When we can't live without the new technology, how do we decide to adapt, to use it in a way that does not diminish our lives and relationships? To what extent are we in danger of growing “mechanical in head and in heart, as well as hand”? And then there is my favorite question: “Will the Kingdom of God be any closer to existing on earth as it is in heaven if I have this tool?” These questions apply to our specific life style choices, but they also hone our skills at asking more complex questions and give us a new comfort level with the process of asking and answering questions on an ongoing deeper spiritual level. So as I end this Lenten Luddite series, I encourage us to take our questions to the next level, to realize that all our questions can be turned into Job-like prayer, sometimes maybe even without the pain and angst. All our questions are better questions when we direct them toward God.

Lord, how much screen time is too much?

Lord, do I really need another book, a new phone? No to the book, yes to phone? I kind of wanted it the other way around.

Lord, what can I do to simplify my life?

What are You calling me to let go of?

What or who are you calling me to connect to?

Lord, where am I going to get the relational energy to connect with all the people you put in my life each day? Did you forget I'm an introvert? Oh, right, you made me that way. You'll l give me all I need to pull it off? Of course. Thanks for the reminder. I'm glad I asked...

*The numbers come from J.L. Hancock's book All the Questions in the Bible as mentioned in Beth Moore's study The Quest.

**I've used the following passage from Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering by Timothy Keller in my devotional blog posts twice before. Here it is for a third time. Yeah, it's that good, and Job's questions are part of the mix of the doubts and complaints and the yelling and screaming Keller talks about:

But why would God be so affirming of Job? Job cursed the day he was born, challenged God's wisdom, cried out and complained bitterly, expressed deep doubts. It didn't seem that Job was a paragon of steady faith throughout. Why would God vindicate him like that?' The first reason is that God is gracious and forgiving. But the crucial thing to notice is this: Through it all, Job never stopped praying. Yes, he complained, but he complained to God. He doubted, but he doubted to God. He screamed and yelled, but he did it in God's presence. No matter how much in agony he was, he continued to address God. He kept seeking him. And in the end, God said Job triumphed. How wonderful that our God sees the grief and anger and questioning, and is still willing to say “you triumphed” - not because it was all fine, not because Job's heart and motives were always right, but because Job's doggedness in seeking the face and presence of God meant that the suffering did not drive him away from God but toward him. And that made all the difference. As John Newton said, if we are not getting much out of going to God in prayer, we will certainly get nothing out of staying away.

 

Human Connection in a Kiosk World

My husband and I frequent fast food restaurants on an embarrassingly regular basis. Post pandemic, with the rapid rise of ordering kiosks, it has become more and more difficult to order from a person at a register and pay cash for our lunch. We have found that at certain times of the day, if we hang around the register looking like hungry people of a certain age, someone will appear from the kitchen area and take our order the old fashioned way. Since we are regulars at one McDonald's, we tend to see the same young girl emerge from the kitchen to help us. On one visit, after an ordering glitch on the counter register, my husband teased her and said he bet she was wishing we had used the kiosk. She looked at us wide-eyed, slowly shook her head and silently mouthed the word “No!” We all laughed, finished the order and we went on to our table, she back to the kitchen. My husband and I spent lunch speculating on what her emphatic “No!” meant. Had we saved her from some unpleasant task in the kitchen? Did kiosk ordering create more problems behind the scenes than a register order? Or perhaps the very existence of her job depended upon people such as us, hanging around the register looking hungry and kiosk-avoidant.

My husband attends a men's group at another McDonald's where only kiosk ordering is available at the early morning hour they meet. Since he usually orders only coffee, he balks at ordering on the kiosk and paying for one coffee with a credit card. He instead goes through the drive-thru, orders his coffee, talks to a real person who accepts his cash and hands him his coffee. At that hour, the drive-thru is a well-oiled machine and the employees are still fresh on their shifts, and are friendly and happy to serve. My husband then parks his car and carries his coffee inside the restaurant to meet up with his group that has ordered their breakfasts via the kiosk, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

These are just two examples of the last remnants of people-to-people connections that we used to take for granted. True, we probably didn't have meaningful in-depth conversations when ordering past Shamrock Shakes, but we did interact with a real person. Self-checkouts at the library have eliminated the interesting conversations I used to have with the desk clerks about books they read and recommended or questions they had about books I was checking out - “Oh, I read her other book. It was a great read!” “You fly fish!!!??” “I think we just got a new book in you might like.” Self-checkouts at the supermarket and ordering apps on phones also have diminished the number of times a weeks we physically interact with others.

Part of the original Luddite rebellion was due to the fact that the mill owners lost sight of the people they employed, ignoring their concerns and their needs. The Luddite weavers were used to an apprentice-style learning model where people would come alongside others to teach and model what a skilled craftsman should do to produce a quality product. The mill owners were interested mainly in rapid production and cheap overhead and would hire those who could work fast but not necessarily work precisely. They looked at the product rather than the producer. What are some of the Luddite-like questions we need to ask today, when faced with a kiosk, an app, a self-checkout? What are we losing in simple human interaction in this machine-dominated workplace? What are some things we can do to not lose the connection we as human beings are meant to have with each other, even if they are just fleeting moments in our day? To return to Thomas Carlyle's quote from my first post in this series, how have we “grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand?” What choices can we make to change that?

Despite being people of a certain age, my husband and I do, in fact, know how to use an ordering kiosk, a self-serve checkout and the scanners at the library. And, as both of us are high on the introvert scale, it is easy for us to be tempted on some days to avoid the human interaction. The machines around us allow us that option, but it doesn't mean it's good for us. We can choose the traditional checkout, even when they are few and far between. We can interact with librarians and store clerks. We can choose to spend more time looking at people's faces than looking at our screens. We were created to know one another, to interact with the people around us. Some we are called to know in depth, to really know. Others we connect with oh so briefly and superficially, but we are called to that as well. At best we do it all imperfectly, but we were made to do it, to look each other in the eye, to smile, to exchange pleasantries, and on occasion, to shake our heads slowly and mouth an emphatic “No!”

 

Anatomy of a Trout Fisherman

This post has nothing to do with Luddites. It has nothing to do with Lent, but in my last post on books, I promised I'd write this. And since the Angle is “eclectic ramblings from faith to fishing” I thought I was long overdue to write one on fishing, though this may be more about writing than about fishing. It's a close call.

In the previous post I mentioned that my brother regularly sends me his fishing magazines when he is done reading them, and occasionally he will send a fishing book along with the magazines. The last batch of magazines contained an old book he had found in his basement, one that he had had for years but just recently got around to reading. Entitled Trout Madness: Being a Dissertation on the Symptoms and Pathology of This Incurable Disease by One of Its Victims it's a collection of fishing essays written by a life long resident of the upper peninsula of Michigan who wrote under the name of Robert Traver. The book itself was a lovely old hard cover edition that had been published in 1960 and as I was relishing the feel and format of it, I skimmed through it from cover to cover before I began reading it. In the front pages of the book there was the list of other books the author had written. One of them was Anatomy of a Murder which sounded familiar. I tucked the title away in my brain and went on to read the fishing essays.

The author spent most of his life as a lawyer in northern Michigan, a profession that proved flexible enough to allow him the freedom to go fishing whenever the urge to do so arose. And fish he did, through most of the middle of the twentieth century on the streams and ponds of the upper peninsula that were still full of native trout. Trout fishing was his main focus, usually with a fly rod, but not always. One of his essays was about his early experiences fishing the then new invention of the spinning reel. It was a fun read from a historical perspective to hear someone talk of the “free-stripping, fixed-spool, anti-backlash reel,” now a staple of the recreational fishing industry and the go-to for most fisherpersons today. Traver gives an in-depth critique of the newfangled reel, its pros and cons, finally coming to the realization that he doesn't dislike the spinning rod and reel so much as he just likes fly fishing so much better. I can relate.

There are twenty one essays in this collection, most amusing, some poignant. One of the longer ones, entitled “The Intruder” I read three times, I was so moved by the story. Two strangers run into each other many years apart on a beautiful secluded trout stream with a world war and its devastating effects intervening between the two meetings. They don't recognize each other at first, one has been so altered by the war, but they finally recognize each other in their fishing. Another more amusing essay gives a glimpse of the author's quirky father who builds a canal in an attempt to connect the family lake to a nearby trout stream hoping the trout stream will feed its fish into the lake. After much work, the canal is completed, and the lake, much to everyone's chagrin, now flowed into the stream instead.

It was this last essay that caused me to go down a literary rabbit trail that proved to be as much fun as reading this book. The author is called Johnny in this essay and in several others. Why wasn't he called Robert or Bob? Also, why does Anatomy of a Murder sound so familiar? Thanks to Wikipedia, I found out that Robert Traver is the pen name of John D. Voelker, Robert being the name of John's sibling who died in World War I, Traver being his mother's maiden name. Since John Voelker did much of his writing while an elected county attorney, he thought using another name would be best. In the 1950s he wrote a novel based on one of his cases where he successfully used a rare form of the insanity defense. The novel, Anatomy of a Murder, became a bestseller in 1958. Even more popular was the 1959 movie of the same name, made by Otto Preminger, scored by Duke Ellington and starring Jimmy Stewart and Lee Remick, eventually nominated for seven Academy Awards. No wonder the title sounded familiar. It was also the first movie to be entirely filmed on location, using Voelker's home office for some scenes, his home town of Ishpeming, Michigan, and the nearby towns of Marquette and Big Bay.

My next rabbit trail was more geographical. The essay where John's father tries to connect the family lake to a trout stream via a canal made me curious – could I find the lake on Google maps? Called Lake Traver in the essay, I took a wild guess that maybe it was called Voelker Lake in reality since John's father took such pride in having the family name formally appear on maps of the local lakes. Sure enough, there is no Traver Lake, but there is a Voelker Lake a few miles south of Ishpeming. The map also shows a nearby trout stream. I even convinced myself I could see the remnants of the ill-fated canal.

John Voelker lived most of his life in the upper peninsula of Michigan. He spent his time fishing, writing and, when necessary, being a lawyer. He was a county prosecuting attorney, a sometimes assistant to the Michigan Attorney General and served several years as a justice on the Michigan Supreme Court. After the success of Anatomy of a Murder, he retired from law and spent his time writing and, of course, fishing. In one of his essays, he talks lovingly about his “fish car”, a small sedan he kept permanently stocked with everything necessary for a day of fishing. And there were many. According to the Wikipedia entry, a close friend claimed John spent five or six days a week fishing for twenty years. It's a wonder he had time to write.

 

The Pages of a Dilemma

True confession: I'm a big fan of the Libby app. This app searches through all the available books in our metro library system - 168,565 of them at the moment. With a few clicks of the mouse on my laptop, one of those books will magically appear on my Kindle and I am ready to read. There is plenty more reading material available if I include magazines and even more if I am willing to place a hold and wait days, weeks, often months for some popular bestseller. Best of all, I can do all this without leaving the house or the couch. I can, and have, done it at midnight. If I leave home without my Kindle, presto! - said book also appears on my phone, saving me from the boredom of a doctor's waiting room. Because there is so much technology tied up in this reading process, I've wondered what Luddite thinking would be in this instance. I've yet to come up with a clear answer.

As good as I have become about asking all the right Luddite questions before acquiring material items, I've never been able to use the same degree of wisdom and prudence when it comes to reading materials. Maybe it's my addiction to knowing stuff, that little girl in me, reading encyclopedias on the dining room floor still can't get enough book knowledge. For most of my life, when it comes to acquiring books, my frugal and restrained buying nature is nowhere to be found. I lived for my Scholastic books orders as a child. My own children learned early on that the Mom who would say no to a toy or a candy bar would almost always say yes to a book. I remember a day when I went out on a focused mission to find a pair of shoes to wear to a wedding. I came home without the shoes, but somehow had managed to buy a large number of books. When it came to our latest move, the one where we did the retirees' downsize from the large family home to the townhouse, books were the hardest thing to let go of. I was brutal, so I thought, reducing my books by more than half. Nevertheless, our new bedroom still looks like a library. I made the decision not to acquire any more books. I made a decision to read more e-books, and any paper books that entered the house would be from local libraries or those lovely neighborhood boxes that function as book exchanges. There, for every book I'd take, I'd feel obliged to leave one of my own. Or so that was how I hoped it would work. I sometimes still pick up a book at a thrift store, but again, try to pass it on to the neighborhood book exchange when I am finished.

The interesting thing I found about e-books vs. paper books is that I read each differently. The Kindle format makes for quick efficient eye movements and lightning fast page turning and, as a result, I read faster. I can read in the dark without an added light source. Bookmarking allows me to immediately go to the page I left off on, a mixed blessing in that I don't see the book cover, causing me to often ask “Who wrote this again?” or sometimes “What is the title of this book?” I often lose all sense of the length of a book. Not being able to see and feel the physical presence as with a paper book, I'm dependent on the page numbers at the bottom of my Kindle screen. These numbers have their own funny accounting for length of book, and I forget they often include pages and pages of notes and appendices and indexes at the end of the book. I'm sometimes  blindsided by the abrupt end to the body of the book - “That's it? I'm done?”

My brother regularly sends me his fishing magazines when he is done reading them, and occasionally he will send a fishing book along with the magazines. The last batch of magazines contained an old book* he had found in his basement, one that he had had for years but just recently got around to reading. It caused me to revisit the joys of real physical paper books. This hard covered book, published in 1960, had the lovely fabric binding and faded teal color of that era. I enjoyed the content of the book immensely, but it was the format, the font, the slightly yellowed pages and the feel of a real book in my hand that I really savored.

That handed-down book made me realize that though I like to read and I like the instant and wide access that e-books provide, I really do love printed paper books, their look, their feel, the way the page turns and the flipping back and forth to reread or look ahead to find out what is going to happen next and when. I think that is why my go-to Bible is a compact ESV reference Bible with a soft binding, a single satin marker ribbon and a beat up fabric cover. Yes, I use biblegateway.com as my quick-look-something-up concordance, and I do have the YouVersion Bible app on my phone so I look younger than my years when I read along with the sermon scriptures in church on Sunday mornings. And maybe the Luddites, with some time travel, and after applying their questions to the merit of non-paper books - Are we losing something valuable, something of quality by embracing this new technology and does it diminish or enhance our lives? - would surprisingly settle down on the side of the e-book. But as for me, when it comes to settling down in extended time with the Author of the Book, reading psalms, doing some lectio divina, maybe going through a Lenten devotional, I want to be able to feel a real book in my hands. Does that make me a Luddite or not? Hence, the dilemma.

*The book, Trout Madness: Being a Dissertation on the Symptoms and Pathology of This Incurable Disease by One of Its Victims – of course intrigued me. It contained a series of essays on trout fishing in the upper peninsula of Michigan written by a life-long resident who wrote under the name Robert Traver. It also led me on a fun investigative rabbit trail that I'll put in another post soon.

 

Living Without

The Plain Reader tells a story of a city person moving to a more rural home in an Amish community. On moving day, the Amish neighbors show up to help the new family unload their truck and carry the boxes into the house. One Amish man, after carrying a number of boxes containing small electric appliances, approached the newcomer and told him that if any of those appliances should break down, call him and he would come right over. The city person, already impressed with the helpfulness and community spirit of his new neighbors, was amazed that an Amish person would also know how to repair a coffee maker or a food processor. He expressed his wonder that his neighbor could fix such things. No, said the Amish man, I have no idea how to repair them, but I can show you how to live without them.

The Luddites knew how to weave fabric without the use of the new powered looms of the early Industrial Revolution. Unlike the Amish, they also knew something about how those new looms operated, and many Luddite weavers could use the powered looms to produce a quality product. But like the Amish neighbor, they knew how to live and survive and even thrive without them. My question for us is: Can we? Do we know how to live and thrive without some of the gadgets we have grown so dependent on? Are we willing to take a look at what we have and what we really need in the way of the “modern conveniences” of our present age?

I am fortunate that I have a heredity of “plain” living, being descended from Hutterites, an Anabaptist community related to the Amish and Mennonites.* Being raised by grandparents who were both of Hutterite descent, I grew up in a household that asked Luddite-like questions, though I'm pretty sure we had no idea who the Luddites were. As a young child I spent a lot of time with my grandmother who was very good at knowing what one could live without. Once, when grocery shopping with Grandma, I asked if we could buy a cake mix. I was attracted by the luscious photos on the boxes and thought they must taste as wonderful as they looked. Grandma told me cake mixes were only for rich people, and besides, didn't she bake some kind of dessert from scratch every day? Fitted sheets were also for rich people, so I learned to make a bed with flat sheets and hospital corners. I watched soap operas with Grandma on days I was home from school and I would often suggest we might want to try some product that was being advertised during the commercials. Grandma would then look at me as though she doubted I had any common sense at all. She would go on to explain, again, that commercials were made by people who would lie to you just to get you to buy something you didn't need in the first place. Her negative attitude toward the earnest efforts of Madison Avenue had its desired effect on me. Cynical child that I had become, I now watched commercials looking for the subtle lies those crafty advertisers were using to get me to buy things I did not want need.

Thanks to Grandma, I eventually grew into an adult relatively immune to the wiles of advertising. I learned I could live without many things. I learned to ask the questions: Do I really need this? Will it really make my life better/easier/more fulfilling? And do I have room for it? Years later, thanks to Anthony Bourdain's edict in his book Kitchen Confidential, I learned I could have a fully functioning kitchen with only one high quality knife.** This revelation confirmed my already growing suspicion that so many kitchen “necessities” might not be necessary at all.

When I was first married, my baking utensil collection consisted of a hand cranked rotary egg beater and a wooden spoon. I choose to forego the large stand mixer, even the hand held mixer, though I did acquire one many years later. I prepared cookie dough and cake batter with a wooden spoon, and if I needed to beat egg whites or whip cream, I took out the rotary egg beater. When my children were young and one of them would eat only carbs, I spent a year baking all of our own bread It was the heyday of the bread machine, but I made bread with only a covered mixing bowl, a wooden spoon and two bread pans. Added bonus – I found the kneading process extremely cathartic. I would have missed all that stress relief of pounding dough onto a floured counter if I had given into a bread machine.

Today, I do own a hand-held electric mixer I use to make cakes as well as whipping egg whites and cream. I have a food processor which I rarely use. After asking all the appropriate Luddite-like questions, I did see my way to purchasing an immersion blender last year which really can do amazing things and has made me consider giving away my food processor. We also own a coffee maker which is my husband's go to for morning coffee and making large amounts of coffee when we have company. I prefer a low tech plastic Melitta brewing cone and paper filter for the best pour-over for one person. My two most used, go-to kitchen “gadgets”, however, are still a good sturdy wooden spoon and a hand cranked rotary grater, the kind that looks like a Klingon warship.

I'm sure there are other things around the house that we have let in over the years that are not absolutely necessary to having a meaningful, productive life – electric tooth brushes, milk frothers, blenders, electric pencil sharpeners, probably other items that have come and gone as they have outlived their dubious usefulness. But I like to think that if the existing conveniences we still have were to break down, we wouldn't need an Amish neighbor to show us how to live without them. Hopefully, we are on our way to figuring it out for ourselves.

*My other blog - https://habanrus.blogspot.com – is all about my Hutterite heredity.

**He says a cook only needs one good chef's knife. He does acknowledge that most people do not have the skills to use a chef's knife as a paring knife so he would allow the home cook one paring knife. And if you insist on a third knife, let it be one for slicing bread. But no knife sets, please!

 

TMI Addendum:

NEI (Not Enough Information)

MUI (Made Up Information)

Yesterday I examined my addiction to know stuff and how the internet plays into that addiction. When I write, I like to make sure what I write is as accurate as possible and therefore like to check for correct attribution for certain quotes I may use. One that my husband uses often and I thought was applicable to my information addiction – that “ ________(fill in the blank), like all addictions, requires ever-increasing amounts of our devotion.” I looked online (Of course, I did.) to find out who said it and could not find the quote anywhere. I'm usually good at online searches but I was stumped. I handed the task over to my husband who has recently found it fun to interact with chatbots, though maybe “mess with” is the better phrase to describe what he does in his interactions with them.

Below I have included my husband's exchange with Microsoft Copilot, formerly known as Bing Chat, a relative of ChatGPT.

Husband:

I am looking for a quote that contains something like this like: Like all addictions it requires an ever increasing amount of our devotion.

Copilot:

My apologies for not hitting the mark initially! Let’s find a quote that aligns more closely with your request. Here’s one that emphasizes the concept of ever-increasing devotion:

“Like all addictions, it requires an ever-increasing amount of our devotion.” — Anonymous

This quote beautifully captures the idea that addictive behaviors demand more and more of our commitment over time. Whether it’s addiction to substances, habits, or even certain emotions, the insatiable hunger for more devotion is a common thread.

Feel free to reflect on this thought-provoking quote, and remember that seeking healthier paths and breaking free from such cycles is a courageous journey.

Husband: (When pressed, Copilot could/would not provide an exact link.)

Husband:

Can you give me the specific site where you found the quote?

Copilot:

I apologize for any inconvenience. Unfortunately, I do not have direct access to external websites or specific sources. However, the quote you mentioned:“Like all addictions, it requires an ever-increasing amount of our devotion.” — Anonymous can be found on various quote websites and platforms. One such source is BrainyQuote, where you can explore a collection of inspiring quotes, including this one. Feel free to visit their website to discover more thought-provoking quotes on various topics. Remember, the wisdom of anonymous authors often resonates deeply, and this particular quote beautifully captures the relentless nature of addiction.

Learn more

brainyquote.com

awakenthegreatnesswithin.com

Husband:

Just a quick question: How can you find the quote but not be able to provide the exact source?

Copilot:

I apologize for any confusion. As an AI language model, I don’t have direct access to external sources or specific websites. The quote I provided is a commonly shared sentiment, and it appears in various places across the internet. Unfortunately, I cannot pinpoint a specific original source for this anonymous quote. If you’re seeking the exact origin, I recommend further research on quote databases or related platforms.

Husband:

OK but I'm still a little confused, I searched on brainyquote.com and could not find that quote. Can you say for certain that it is listed on that site?

Copilot:

I apologize for any confusion. Upon further review, it appears that the specific quote I provided is not listed on BrainyQuote. I appreciate your diligence in verifying the information, and I apologize for any inconvenience caused. While the quote is widely shared, its original source remains elusive. If you have any other requests or need assistance, feel free to ask!

I found the above online conversation interesting as well as amusing for several reasons. In that I don't “mess” with chatbots myself, it was a revealing look at what such a tussle might look like. It also caused me to ask the Luddite-like question: Is the information out there and the newer ChatGPT means by which the information is accessed really going to add to the quality of my knowledge? It this instance, no. Was Copilot just parroting back the quote my husband provided? Maybe. So is there any purpose to spar with Copilot other than for the sport of messing with it? This was not the first time my husband took on a chatbot, sometimes asking it to answer a question he already knows the answer to to see how accurately the chatbot can provide the answer. It often can't, though the chatbot is always politely grateful to my husband for increasing its knowledge. My daughter's comment: “Hey, Dad. You're training chatbots!”

 

TMI

There was a Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedia set in a bookcase in the dining room of my childhood home. When I was old enough to read and to know what an encyclopedia was, I would spend hours sitting on the floor by the bookcase, pulling out random volumes and reading about...whatever. I was addicted to knowing stuff. Fast forward way too many years and the child I was is still spending hours, now sitting on the sofa with a laptop, clicking on random links and reading about...whatever. I'm still addicted to knowing stuff.

Some people doom scroll. I fun scroll. Instructions for origami bats that flap their wings. Recipes for low fodmap gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate oatmeal cookies. Luddites! I want to know more about Luddites! The IMDb! Who played Reverend Mother Mohiam in Dune: Part 2? Oh, look - a video of someone catching smallmouth bass on the Mississippi in Minneapolis. And another video on how to tie a fly to catch them on! I also news scroll, of course. And weather scroll. And “Oh, this looks like an interesting article” scroll. And “What did he say now?” scroll.

When one is addicted to knowing stuff, Too Much Information can be one's drug of choice. And like all addictions, knowing stuff requires ever-increasing amounts of one's devotion.* I can pat myself on the back for not turning on the television all day, or at least, until the 10 pm news, but can I make it past 7 am without going online and seeing if the Google News headlines have changed since I read them last night? Only if I've overslept. And the fact that I access all my information on an aging laptop rather than on my phone does not allow me to score points for being any sort of a technological Luddite. Where once I might have given up watching all television for Lent, the closest I've come to giving up knowing stuff for Lent is to rein it in a bit, check my email once a day, read the news once a day, look at facebook for no more than five minutes, once a day. Limiting myself to actual paper newspapers or spending time that I normally would have spent online reading books – real paper books – may make me feel more noble, but I need to face the fact that I'm still in some way feeding my addiction to knowing stuff. Don't get me wrong - I am grateful for the World Wide Web and the almost immediate access I have to information. It's saved dinner many a time. It's fixed potential household disasters. It's helped me navigate a myriad of medical issues. But how Much Information is Too Much Information? Do I even recognize the hold the information highway has on my life? Am I willing to ask the Luddite question: What have I gained in my access to unlimited information and what have I lost? The spiritual question I ponder is this: How much do I really need to know if I already have an all-knowing God? Am I usurping His place in my life in some way, depending on myself and my online life to have the “right” information immediately to go forward with my life? How much am I depending on Him and how much am I depending on the sometimes dubious information that the internet is always willing to provide? Is my first inclination to pray, to turn to that all-knowing God when I think I need to know something?

*Funny story about trying to attribute the original source of this quote. I'll save it for tomorrow.

 

Screen Time and Knitting

As most children of the 1950s, my brother and I grew up in a home with one small television set. Unlike our peers, we still had a small black and white TV long after others had moved on to larger colored models. And we had the added onus placed on us that television should only be watched if we had something productive to do while watching it. Grandma ironed while watching soap operas, peeled apples or potatoes while watching the news, mixed batters and dough with a wooden spoon during other programs. I was the queen of crafts as a child, an early crocheter and knitter and embroiderer, so I could justify watching almost anything. My brother, lacking such productive occupations, watched less television.

As good Catholic kids, it was not uncommon for one or both of us to give up television for Lent. I think we viewed it as visual candy, something that was enjoyable but not particularly good for us. I don't remember being insightful as to why this was so, and I don't remember deliberately choosing to fill the lack of TV watching with more noble pursuits, though I probably read a lot more books during Lent. As an adult, the few times I gave up TV for Lent I was a bit more purposeful in choosing to fill the time with the reading of “good”, if not downright spiritual books.

By the time we had kids I was more aware of the ups and downs of television watching and had deliberate purposes for the one television policy that so tormented our son. My explanation to our kids as to why we had only one set was in the interests of family unity. Their peers had their own TVs in their bedrooms, as did their parents. Everybody got to watch what they wanted to watch on their own, seldom interacting with one another while watching. We were not going to be that kind of family. We would watch television together. For the most part, it worked for us. Our girls could recite the battle cries of the movie Gettysburg as easily as our son could quote Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Nobody got to watch what they wanted all the time, but everyone had a say in what was to be watched. Our one television unity worked until the adolescent sport obsession took hold of our son. This coincided with the start of his telling his friends about his Amish upbringing. The two were related. Out of pity for our poor deprived son, he got invitations to friends' homes to watch significant football and basketball games. Though we usually gave him permission to go to their houses, he was always quick to point out if we had a second television set, he'd still be in our house watching the game, keeping the family unity intact...sort of.

In some ways, television watching, if it can even be called that anymore, is more controllable than it was for my childhood or even my children's childhood. DVDs, then streaming services made entertainment watching no longer tied to a station's schedule, but available when we determined we wanted to watch something. This is both good and bad news. Binge watching when I was a child was turning on the Million Dollar Movie which would show a single movie, such as Godzilla, once every night, Monday through Friday, and twice on Saturday and Sunday. Binge watching today is seeing all six seasons of Downton Abbey in as tight a time frame that eating and sleeping will allow. And if one has enough knitting or crocheting projects, one could justify watching Lady Edith getting her heart broken repeatedly as productive craft time. Just saying...

Some questions to ponder this Lent regarding the time spent before whatever we call television these days: How much time do we spend entertaining ourselves with what we watch? Are we doing it because we sincerely enjoy it, or are we just filling up time to avoid doing something else more productive, more valuable? Are we doing it alone or are we enjoying other people's company as we do it, maybe critiquing said entertainment afterwards over wine or coffee, tea if you watched Downton Abbey? What is the quality of what we are watching? Guilty pleasures are sometimes OK, but to paraphrase Huskins' question: Will the Kingdom of God be any closer to existing on earth as it is in heaven if I watch this show? Will I be doing myself spiritual damage if I watch this show? Am I brave enough to even ask these questions about my entertainment choices and, ultimately, am I willing to let God into the process of determining the answers?

The trouble is that the channels of entertainment – and television (being) the chief culprit – disorient more than they orient. Promising to make sense of the world for us, they merely multiply the collage of disconnected images and sounds and experiences that come at us. - David Henderson, in notes in The Next Christians

The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion. And yet it is the greatest of our miseries. For it is that above all which prevents us thinking about ourselves and leads us imperceptibly to destruction. But for that we should be bored, and boredom would drive us to seek some more solid means of escape, but diversion passes our time and brings us imperceptibly to our death. - Blaise Pascal

 

Lent Like a Neo-Luddite

A number of years back, I stumbled across a book that, after the Bible, was, for me, the most life-changing volume I'd ever read. Entitled The Plain Reader: Essays on Making a Simple Life, it came about as a result of the Second Luddite Congress. Interestingly, there probably wasn't a true First Luddite Congress, as the original Luddites only met informally in small groups to plan their attacks against the mill owners. The Second Luddite Congress was a bit larger, drawing people from across the United States to a Quaker meetinghouse in Barnesville, Ohio in 1996. Organized by the Center for Plain Living, the attendees came from all walks of life, some from the metropolitan areas of the East Coast, some of them midwest farmers, some Amish, Friends (Quaker) and other Anabaptist groups. Some were ministers, some teachers, some ecologists. All were there to share their interest in what it means to live a simple or simpler life and to ask the tough questions about what place technology should or shouldn't have in their lives.

As far as I know, there were no technologically destructive incidents as a result of the Second Luddite Congress, at least no physically destructive ones, though some attendees attest to drastically changing their lives and lifestyles as a result of the Congress. What the gathering did produce was a wonderful collection of essays that were informative and thought-provoking and leaves the reader asking some of the same questions the original Luddites asked. These neo-Luddite essayists revisit the questions – Does allowing “this” into my life make my life better, “this” being a new gadget, a new technology, a new version of an old technology, perhaps even a new social construct, or whatever the powered looms of our day may look like? Do I gain something valuable and worthwhile? Do I lose something old but precious in allowing a new way of doing something into my life?

I highly recommend tracking down a copy of The Plain Reader and going through it. Not every essay is for everyone, though all are interesting and thought provoking. There are the expected essays in such a volume, those on sustainability and organic farming, living a simpler life in general and a few alarmist anti-technology, anti-computer selections. There are instructions on how to hand wash all your laundry (Thank you, but...no.) and what simple toys are best for children. Wendell Berry has an essay on what the medical industry says about how we view health. There are also several articles on unplugging the media. Despite the book being close to 30 years old, most of the essays are timeless and surprisingly still relevant.

One of my favorite essays, entitled “Mix and Match” does a good job of summing up the Luddite dilemma of discerning when to hold onto the old and when, perhaps, a venture into the new is more appropriate. Written by James Huskins, a businessman-turned pastor/farmer from Ohio, this essay is a succinct and humorous look at Huskins' struggle to discern what elements of modern technology he should allow in his life. He uses a horse and buggy for local travel, but still maintains a car for long trips. As a pastor, he long resisted using anything but pen and paper for sermon preparation. As he took a pastorate at a larger church he ventured from word processor to PowerBook, saving hours of sermon preparation time per week, time better spent in the more relational aspects of pastoring. In addition to the questions I mentioned above, he added an additional one: “Will the Kingdom of God be any closer to existing on earth as it is in heaven if I have this tool?” In the case of the computer, he felt the answer was yes. As the essay ends, Huskins leaves us with the image of the glow of his computer screen emanating from the inside of his horse-drawn buggy as he travels about his pastorate.

I find this essay encouraging, partly because I, too, have chosen to forgo pen and paper and write this blog on a laptop, but then I go a step farther to publish it on a website and link it to - gasp! - facebook. Huskins' honesty about the tension between technology and the simpler life helps me see how much thought, discernment and prayer needs to happen when we make choices on how we are to live our lives. No matter how strong our Luddite leanings, most of us will not take a sledgehammer to our present jobs and lifestyles and take up organic farming with horse and plow or use a horse and buggy as our primary means of transportation. But we can choose to live our lives differently from the way the surrounding culture says we should. I think Huskins' question - “Will the Kingdom of God be any closer to existing on earth as it is in heaven if I have this tool?” - is a good starting point for my Lenten look at thinking, discerning and praying about the choices I make in my desire to live a simpler life. This question, I suspect, can generate a series of related questions – Is this tool/item/idea going to bring me closer to God? In what way will this tool/item/idea impoverish the talents and creative skills God has given me? Such questions will ultimately lead me to a simple basic one – Am I willing to let God into my decision-making process when I am given the opportunity to allow a new tool/item/idea in my life?

                                

 Lent Like a Luddite

 

My son was in middle school when he started telling his friends that his family was Amish. Yes, we grew our own vegetables in a garden nourished by our own compost piles. Mom baked bread without a bread machine and hand knitted sweaters. And, yes, Dad didn't own a snowblower and cleared the driveway with a shovel. The chief evidence, however, of my son's claim, according to his observations, was that we lived in a four bedroom house with a living room and a family room and had only one television set. Just one. He repeated this unimaginable fact to his friends, said it in German in his high school language class, and even briefly convinced his college roommate freshman year that his upbringing might as well have been without electricity.

Of course, we weren't Amish, not by a long shot. Had my son known as much about history and low technology philosophies as he does today, he probably would have come up with another, more accurate word to describe our family life style. He might have declared us Luddites.

This year I decided to do some random Lenten writings exploring what it might look like to do Lent like a Luddite. If you are familiar with the term “Luddite” and you have read this far, you might have a picture in your head of me taking a sledgehammer to my laptop and writing this with pencil and paper. Or perhaps imagining my husband and I finally getting the household television count down to zero. Neither is true. Since the term “Luddite” is often used incorrectly,I thought I'd spend the rest of this post explaining who the Luddites really were and why I think they have something to say about how we can spend Lent.

The Luddites were highly skilled weavers and textile craftsmen living during the early days of the industrial revolution in England. Named after the semi-fictitious Ned Ludd*, the Luddites were neither anti-technology nor ignorant of the operation and working of the textile machines of the day. They were “educated” craftsmen in that they spent years in apprenticeships learning their craft. The quality of their work reflected their effort and they took pride in the excellence of their product. In the early 1800s in England the hard economic times brought on by the ongoing Napoleonic wars coincided with the beginnings of mass produced fabrics. Many of the operators of the new textile machinery were untrained, poorly paid and produced low quality goods. The Luddites attempted to get the attention of textile mill owners, hoping to maintain the high standard of the textile craftsmen and earn a wage appropriate for their training and quality of work, even if they now would produce it on powered machines. The mill owners preferred to pay untrained operators and settle for inferior textiles, pocketing the savings for themselves. Angered at what they saw as a insult to both their livelihood and the quality of their craft, the Luddites began their destructive attempt to get the mill owners to reconsider. Using large sledgehammers, they smashed and destroyed weaving frames all over England. Machine breaking became a capital offense and eventually the retribution by the authorities against the Luddites became more violent than the Luddites' assaults on the mills.

In 1829, Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle noted that the people of the time were aware of both the positive and the negative aspects of the Industrial Revolution and the amazing “mighty change” it would cause in their “modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand.”

Today, the Luddites are mainly remembered for their violence against the technological machines of their day. But the Luddites also asked important questions that we can learn to ask in our day, and I think Lent is a good time to ponder these questions. For each new technology - “machine” - we let into our lives, are we losing something valuable, something of quality that the “old way” of doing it provided? How can this loss be avoided? When we can't live without the new technology, how do we decide to adapt, to use it in a way that does not diminish our lives and relationships? To what extent are we in danger of growing “mechanical in head and in heart, as well as hand”? I'll be asking myself these questions in the weeks before Easter. I suspect the answers will not come easily.

*Ned Ludd might have existed, but he was only a symbolic image of the movement, giving his name to it. He was by no means a recognizable leader. He may have been a young apprentice that damaged some weaving equipment in a fit of rage years before the Luddites did their own spectacular damage.