Turn off your phone. Go outside. Pay attention. And pray. | Opinion
Life should be pretty simple. Breathe in, breathe out. Only it’s not.
I am increasingly out of sync with what passes for life today. The talk is all about technology. The latest device. What someone posted on TikTok or Instagram. And the news is filled with bombs and bloodshed.
I’m ready to get off the bus. No, I don’t want to end my life. I want to find it. Rediscover it. Stop the madness. Somewhere between Eden and the Kardashians we got off track. Jack Johnson may have said it best in his hip lament: Where did all the good people go? I’ve been changing channels but I don’t see them on the TV shows.
Well, here’s the good news. The wild geese flying high overhead while you’re waiting in line at Chick-fil-A have not lost their way. My little beagle is living large. Same for this fat bumble bee I’ve been watching wash his face in nectar. And this wildly extravagant orchid tree that has rendered me speechless.
There’s a river that splashes its way down the mountain behind my cabin, and it is teeming with life that knows exactly what it’s doing and why. So how is it that the “smartest” species on the planet – Earth’s apex predators – are eating antidepressants like candy, overdosing on opioids and alcohol, and complaining there’s “nothing to watch” on streaming services with hundreds of movies and television shows?
We are literally shooting one another over a parking place. Even those who should be our brightest and best – our national lawmakers – needed 15 rounds of voting to select a leader.
Hear more Tennessee voices:Get the weekly opinion newsletter for insightful and thought-provoking columns.
Our churches should be able to help, but Christianity – once a life-changing countercultural movement – has become so thoroughly captured by the culture that sociologists can’t tell the difference between church folks and everyone else. We have the same divorce rate. Same crime rate. Give about the same amount to charity – which isn’t much – drive the same cars and live in the same neighborhoods. We buy just as many guns and kill ourselves and others at about the same rate as the guy who goes fishing every Sunday.
The radical Kingdom of God that Jesus came preaching has been reduced to a transactional religion that cares more about what a person believes than how he treats others and that hands out tickets to heaven like they were passes to a discount movie matinee.
I believe in prayer. Take a walk in the Smokies and you might. Jesus’ little 30-second job he offered in contrast to the long-winded prayers of his day is instructive. Words don’t matter much. It’s all about the attitude. Getting off our silly high horses – the big houses and cars, fancy clothes, newest technology – and seeing ourselves for who we really are. Stumblers and bumblers. In other words, coming clean. Ending the charade and getting real with God and everybody else. But mostly getting real with ourselves and seeing this wild, short, spectacular life for what it is. A miracle.
I want to see us climb out of this hole we’ve dug for ourselves and become human again. Here’s my suggestion for one way to do it.
Get outside. Go to the woods. Or to the shore. And shut up. Duct tape your mouth if you have to.
Turn off your phone and observe. I mean REALLY LOOK. And listen. You should be able to hear the birds you’ve been ignoring. The crickets and tree frogs. Get quieter still, and you can hear your own precious heart beating. Your breath going in and out. Soak that in. Ruminate on the reality that you are alive and in this world and may not be so lucky tomorrow.
When you get hungry, go back inside. Eat and pay attention to it. If you’re eating meat, think about the animal that sacrificed its life for you and may have been tortured its entire short, miserable existence. Appreciate the farmers and truck drivers who brought it to your table.
Go to bed when you’re tired and for heaven’s sake, don’t take your tablet or cellphone. Wind down. Relax and sleep until you wake up. You can get back into a routine later. Find a bookstore and buy a book of poetry. Maybe two. Mary Oliver is my favorite for what’s ailing us, but Billy Collins and Tony Hoagland will do just fine. Or Yeats, Keats or Dickinson. Nikki Giovanni. Langston Hughes. Take half the time you spend each night on your devices and use it to read – perhaps even memorize – poetry.
It's going to change your life. The outdoors. The poetry. The honest prayers. The fresh insights about what matters and what doesn’t. You’re going to tend your primary relationships better. Which will make you feel better. Make new friends. Volunteer at a local charity until giving feels like receiving. It will happen, I promise.
The bad news is you don’t have a lot of time to get this done. You’re racing towards the end of your life at warp speed. You don’t realize it, but the rest of us can see your hair blowing back.
But life is long if you’re lucky. If you’re not, remember that a butterfly has about 30 days. And that is time enough.
Buzz Thomas is an ordained Southern Baptist minister, attorney and former interim superintendent of Knox County Schools.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Opinion: Turn off your phone. Go outside. Pay attention. And pray.
