There’s no way to know

Gabi and I live in a small, cinderblock rambler built for vets returning from the Korean War. The living room is terribly designed - there's a large, brick wall that's off center and a fireplace on that brick that is neither centered on the brick nor in the room. On top of that, above the fireplace is the only real place to put a tv. All that to say, Gabi and I were talking about solutions the other night after Kelly went to bed and she wondered aloud if a projector could help. I immediately had questions about placement, size, throw distance, keystone, and cost, so I pulled out my phone to start Googling.

A minute later I realized Gabi was annoyed. I had reflexively pulled the Google rip-cord and exited our conversation.

I know I'm not the only one with this reflex. A question arises and we need to know NOW. Unanswered questions feel like loose ends and without thinking we ignore real people for the glow of our phone.

My wife and I love the deadpan comedian Tig Notaro who, when those loose-end questions come up with friends, likes to shake her head and respond wistfully, "There's no way to know."

But here's the thing: the phone itself isn't a bad thing. Neither is the desire to look things up.

The problem is the reflex, the unexamined urge to drop everything, including a conversation with my wife, to look something up. It's fragmentation. It's divided attention. And in the modern world, everything is trying to grab our attention.

Author Greg McKeown writes, "If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will."

So many things are trying to prioritize our lives.

One of our values at LFPPC is Wholehearted Faith. We define that as:

Love God and neighbor with everything you’ve got, trusting God to meet you through doubt, vulnerability and change.

Wholehearted faith is a kind of knowing that God is always with you; it teaches us to live in a complex world. It’s for doubters and dreamers and everyone in between. We strive to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves.  

To me, this means bringing our whole lives to God. What's important in my life? Where do I see God at work? And what's distracting me from that?

Because love needs attention.

I don't want my phone to pull attention away from a conversation with my wife, or anyone else for that matter. I think wholehearted faith means learning to curate my life. It means saying no to lower priorities so I can fully give myself to higher ones. It means saying 'there's no way to know.'

Grace & Peace,

Kim Herbert