Veteran PC users know the drill, especially, if like me, they
live in the Windows computer universe. I’m hard at work on a document or
spreadsheet or surfing the net and suddenly the screen freezes up. Nothing responds,
even as I tap at the keyboard in frustration and panic. The dreaded “turning
circle” icon pops up. A “not responding” message appears. The computer is hung
up, caught in an endless loop.
I can’t go back. Can’t go forward. Can’t save my work. Can’t do anything. I’m stuck in digital
purgatory, suspended between the hell of losing all my data and the heaven of
full recovery and so, there is finally only one thing I can do.
Reboot.
Shut down the whole system. Begin again. Strike three keys simultaneously
(Ctrl, Alt and Delete), or click “Restart”, for cyber resurrection. The screen
goes blank, the system whirs and then miraculously, the Windows icon reappears.
Life recommences.
“THANK YOU JESUS!” OK:
that’s my personal exclamation when
I’m saved from a computer crash. Reboot is my “go to” hack for any electronic
problem. Turn it off. Turn it on. Say a
little prayer too.
If only we could reboot our world. Wouldn’t that be awesome?
At times of massive stimulation overload, we could just shut the whole world
down, turn it off, hit a switch, strike ctrl/alt/delete and begin again. For sometimes
in the machine called humanity: we go on overload too. We have much too much
information coming in that doesn’t compute. The circuits of our brains and
hearts and souls are flooded to overcapacity.
“Not responding”.
That’s how I’m feeling more than a week after Orlando. In a week when
we marked the one year anniversary of the Charleston
church shooting. In a week when the life of a young person gunned down in the
halls of a Boston
high school was remembered too. I just want to turn the whole world off and
reboot. Return to a “before” time, before all those innocent lives were lost to
hatred and chaos. Before far too many of our so called “leaders” responded in
typical fashion to the next cataclysmic event.
Not with wisdom or action, but instead with blustering judgments or perpetual
inaction.
Reboot.
I want to shut down the unrelenting 24/7 news cycles that overwhelms
most of us with far too much information and far too little understanding. I
want to shut down the social media orgy that can bring far too much heat and
far too little light, into our collective efforts to build community. I want to
shut down the folks who are absolutely, completely convinced, that they alone
are right. I don’t care about their political leanings or religious faith. Right now, we’ve got too much self
righteousness and too little humility in our national dialogue. I want to shut
down the volume of our culture. Hit the mute button, until the day when we
finally learn how to talk with each
other and not merely at each other.
I even imagine God in the heavens, sitting before a computer
called Creation. I wonder if God is
tempted to hit the “reboot” button too.
To ask, “What is it about ‘love one another’ that my children just do
not seem to understand?”
Reboot.
My prayer for all of us in these overloaded days, when it feels
as if our communal computer may be about to crash, is that each of us has a
place to spiritually reboot ourselves. At its best this is what faith in God is
all about. Rebooting regularly. Being together. Loving each other. Loving “the
other”. Loving God. Loving the world, even in all its brokenness. Last Sunday I was so grateful to return to my
faith community: to talk together, pray together, worry together, be together, and
act for the good, together. We’re far from perfect. But God knows we are
trying.
How about you? Do you have such a sanctuary, or a tradition,
or some beloved community to return to for a reboot? I really, really, really hope so. If the past days have
taught us anything, it is that we all need each other, maybe now more than
ever.
God help us all…to reboot.
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