Focusing on Focusing.

Stillness is the only thing in this world that has no form. But then, it is not really a thing, and it is not of this world. - Eckhart Tolle

I'm not on Facebook as much as formerly, it's something that I'm moving away from and no longer checking regularly. Not a conscious decision, I just don't get much info or satisfaction there. I'm finding that this lack of allure is true for me in a lot of what passes for entertainment now. The TV is off, for the most part. Haven't touched a console controller for weeks. Gamer apps are all collecting virtual dust. I'm turning off the AM radio on the drive, and even finding myself interrupting mainstream christian songs with the power button. If I'm playing worship music, it's straight-up straight-to-God MeToYou worship. Weak lyrics and warped theology is worse than silence, no matter how good the autotuning.

So much of the noise is silenced right now. I'm getting skinnied down to listening to real peoples' voices, preaching, and original music, lately. I'm finding so much win talking with people. Imagine, conversation! That, and gleaning wisdom in sermon-sized packages. Then, alone time in quiet or just pulling out the guitar and putting rhythm to my silence.

Next stop: Stillness. I'm not completely there yet. But I'm shushing down.

Noise-utainment is at its high-water mark for the church. Man, so great that they're playing such awesome music in the buffet line! But I'm afraid all the show is just a hot pink band-aid on a terminally ill patient. The sing/sit-down-shut-up/sing sandwich on Sundays is dead. No one can hear the format flatlining though, because they mistake the drum kit for a heartbeat.

There's no life in it because there's no community or relationship in it. And the irony is, the more warm bodies you cram into it, the less alive it can possibly become. But America is attracted to the crowd. The nearer the congregation gets to fire capacity, the better - the more successful! The more disconnected. Everyone might as well be at a drive-in movie - Motor in, have your experience within your own space, maybe wave at someone else through your window, and motor on home.

The one-man sermon isn't going to work in 10 years. Listening to one person talk for more than 10 minutes is beyond the next generation's desire to apprehend. Blame televised conditioning; EMF induced ADHD … and, a craving for the raw and the real. Older folks think this is a shame. But - and hear this Boomer gens! - this same group that's face first in a palm-sized rectangle is potentially much stronger than you relationally. The Group is their default setting, even if it's a virtual group. You grew up an Individual, with the nuclear family and Citizenship as your model, and your self-sufficiency and self-reliance and self-worth are always going to wall you off from intimacy with God and others. Their view is one that grew up under the Cloud, and they think that there is an audience that cares about their smallnesses, that their value is found in the mass, not the self.

There's value in community; that's the future. Millennials automatically desire community. I've got to desire to desire community - I wasn't steeped in the Group. But at least I recognize community as a fundamental need… we at least have that much in common. That, and a shared distaste for Facebook.

Now to master stillness. And model that there's juice in turning off and tuning in.