ken wilson online

If you’re a young pastor, chances are you’re electronically connected: emailing, text messaging, Facebook, all the day long.  And you know this has an addictive quality. The brain is wired to be alert and curious about any new information.  And electronic media delivers!  We consume triple the daily information that we did (er, I did) in 1960.  While new media brings myriad advantages, you know in your bones that it’s also a curse: a steady stream of white noise that leaves you feeling a mile wide and an inch deep.

No, you don’t have to get off the grid to escape. Though the occasional day long (or longer) media fast, come to think of it, is a great idea.  I’m sure I’m less connected than you are, but here’s what I do to make a little more space for whatever it is that happens when I’m not checking email.  I’m working the art of sacred disconnection points through the day.  Training my brain to let me unplug from the digital machine.

1. No emails an hour before bedtime. Most of my anxiety producing communication happens through email.  You know the story–the tone, the freedom to speak one’s mind without regard for the emotions of the receiver, etc.  Train your brain, by repetition, over and over, until it’s habitual, not to check email an hour before bedtime.

2. Set up an electronic media free zone. A prayer chair in a prayer corner, perhaps.  A place you go to get off the the information highway.  Whatever you do in that chair, don’t have anything to do with anything that depends on binary code there.

3. Practice prayer at intervals through the day. Morning and night is an interval.  But the real  benefits come when you add a mid-day interruption–a pause in the action to duck in for a few minutes of prayer somewhere.  I use The Divine Hours, by Phyllis Tickle.  And yes, it feels at first like extracting a tooth–pulling yourself away from whatever it is that is occupying your thoughts.   But it gets easier with repetition and the act of pulling yourself away trains your brain to refocus.  And if your brain is not able to do that, my fellow pastor, you will be a sucker for any enslavement.

4. Practice a focusing prayer–like the Jesus Prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me.”  First part on the inhale, second part on the exhale.  Over and over, meditatively, for oh, say, a minute or two–better yet five or ten.  Yes, your mind will rebel at first, running riot like a toddler past his nap time.  But every time it tries to focus on anything other than the prayer, you just gently and non-judgmentally turn your attention back to the words of the prayer.

Add these practices one at a time over time as you are able.  Pick one and insist on it with yourself.  Meaning, keep returning to it after forgetting until it’s habitual.  You know, habitual, like checking email when you’ve got a spare moment, or taking at peek at what’s happening on the Twitternet from your iPhone.

I know, it’s probably not called the Twitternet. But, hey! I’m a boomer, and at least I’m trying, so give me credit for that.

[What's a good book to help with this sort of thing,  you might ask?  Funny you should ask.]

Tags: brain, electronic, email, media, mystically wired, text messaging, twitter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 9:03 am and is filed under advice to young pastors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.