Wednesday, September 13, 2023
Memorial of Saint John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
I lift my eyes up, to the mountains
Rejoice and leap for joy! Your reward will be great in heaven.
Yesterday Jasper cuddled up with Margaret mid-morning, and they read The Boy, The Bear, The Baron and the Bard book. It’s his favorite, he said. Margaret’s too. They keep digging deeper into the remarkable pictures on every page. No words.
Like every parent and grandparent, we struggle with screentime. And we are determined to measure and limit Jasper and Miles’ screentime, against everything else.
At least Jasper knows what he wants.
“I want to watch Paw Patrol all day and then all night, and then all day again,” he said yesterday.
Andi said, “What day is this?”
“Tuesday,” Jasper said.
“What day do you get to watch Paw Patrol for an hour?”
“Saturday.”
Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.
Then she left, and Jasper wept, and we held him when he’d let us, and he stopped crying, and we moved on. Margaret read Doctor Squash to him, which he loves. He talked about where he’d like to go with us, mostly to stores and restaurants, but also to playgrounds and the library. Margaret found a cool numbers game (on her iPad) that brought Jasper completely back to the land of the living.
After that, his sweet smile never left his face.
Day by day in 2023 we keep learning that the screen will not provide nirvana, that we need each other, and books and pictures and playtime. Jesus told us that.
Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep.
Whoa! I know the beatitudes forward and backward. I know the words. Living the words is the only way to live … but I still fail to remember that my screen, full of fascinating Google discoveries that never stop coming, only masquerades as an altar. I need a real one.
Because actually having God’s altar to kneel in front of … that’s the cat’s pajamas. That’s the real thing. It doesn’t get any better than this. Advertisements from television and the internet plaster my brain. Lord, please paint whitewash over them all. I do not need them or want them, but they stick stubbornly in my thoughts. Please, Lord, replace them with yourself.
At the Vineyard in Champaign Mahesh Chavda spoke for three nights. He invited us up (hundreds of us) for prayer. I went up and stood alongside many others. He got to me. How can I pray for you? “Old pornography,” I said.
“Burn that thing out!” he exclaimed. And I had a vision, a picture of God as a great white dove with wide streaming wings. The dove flew between my mind’s eye and my memories. I heard the flapping of her wings. Pornographic pictures were obscured. I could only see the Lord.
That gift stayed … left, but mostly it stayed. It lives inside me still, and the Dove flies through my mind on many days. God reserves the altar for himself. I know that in more than words, because as She flies my mind changes, and my life changes, and I am free.
(Colossians 3, Psalm 145, Luke 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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