Now I am not talking about our yearly attempt to get thin after eating too much and exercising too little over the holidays (although I would like to lose about 8 lbs before the end of March).
I am talking about our tendency to a) define ourselves oh so very narrowly in terms of who we are and what we stand for; b) our willingness to allow ourselves to be satisfied with symbols and not substance. Allow me to explain....
All across America we hear a cry for an end to the bickering and posturing, and yet the reality is that we are defining ourselves by a narrower and narrower bandwidth. If you cannot agree with me about everything we cannot agree about anything seems to be the motto for today. The follow up is that if we cannot agree then we just write one another off.
I attended a conference called, 'Big Tent Christianity' which attempted to get folks from the various tribes of Christianity talking to and hopefully listening as well to one another. It is a marvelous attempt, but what I noticed was that it was mostly represented by only one portion of the tent. While attempts were made to bridge the divide, let's be honest, religious people like to hang onto their cherished religious beliefs and as a result we are better at building walls than bridges.
The other conference was a symposium lead by Andrew Root as he helped us understand a culture that is rich in symbols and poor in substance. Through scientific evidence and anecdotal experience he showed us how these two-dimensional symbols have become the new reality, because it is easier that way. Of course, this means that we are getting 'thin' in our concept of reality which in turn impacts how we are willing to engage in discourse with other world views.
What does this all mean? Well for one, I believe that the speed in which we live life is not just detrimental to our sense of the Spirit, but it is now impacting our sense of reality. If we live a spritiually deprived and physically constricted lifesytle, can you imagine what that means for our humanity? This last week the best at Jeopardy were beaten by Watson, the IBM computer. Maybe this is a portent of what awaits us as we become 'thinner' in our humanity.
