Recharging Without Technology

In late May, I had the amazing opportunity to take a pilgrimage with Lutheran Campus Ministry to the monastic village of Taizé in France. (See Pastor Kate’s blog here!). While this community is known around the world for numerous things, such as their beautiful prayer services and the Brothers themselves, one thing that I particularly grew to love while at Taizé was their limited use of technology and the internet, and how that helped me take a break from the world and find peace after coming from such a hectic semester.

I’m actually surprised how relaxing and freeing it was to be completely disconnected from the outside world because I am such an internet junkie; just about anyone can tell you how much I love social media or how I reference random Youtube videos all the time.

Even when I’m travelling and I have the rare opportunity to set down my phone and be thousands of miles away from my stressful, sometimes chaotic life, I don’t let myself get away from it all and just be.

This lead me to be a little worried about the low tech aspect of Taizé that I had heard so much about because I am so dependent on it. Yet, it also made me excited to leave my stressors behind and just have a week focused on faith (which truth be told was something I really needed).

While at Taizé, I didn’t use my phone for an entire week. There wasn’t cell service, so I wasn’t texting or calling somebody every few minutes. There wasn’t WiFi surrounding the village, so no easy access to Facebook or email. (In fact, if you wanted to use the internet, you had to be quite methodical about it and buy a Wi-Fi card. Then, you had to go to a specific area of Taizé which was the only deemed Wi-Fi zone).

The first night was admittedly difficult because I’m so used to scrolling through my phone at night. But after that, I was thrilled to be rid of my phone and internet; I didn’t even once think about going to buy a Wi-Fi card.

At Taizé, I met so many amazing people that I have now become friends with from all over the world and the best part about interacting with them was that none of us were distracted by our phones. When I would talk with someone, there wasn’t a screen in front of our faces the entire time; we would just talk, pure human interaction. This unhindered communication allowed us to really open up and get to know one another in an extremely fast and deep way, which is nearly impossible to replicate back in the States with technology so readily at our fingertips.

Yes, technology is fantastic and technology is actually what is helping me keep these great Taizé friendships thriving. But we need to remember on a daily basis not to let it own us; our phone is just a hunk of plastic and we have the power to turn it off for an hour, or even a day, to get some alone time.

It is also worth remembering that there are few things greater than having a face to face, in-person conversation with somebody and we should try our best to not let our phones get in the way of building those relationships. I truly believe we see God through interacting with others, and when we use our technology to put up a wall between us and the other or to distract ourselves from the world, we aren’t being fully present on this earth and we aren’t being fully present with God.

As stated before, I am a self-proclaimed internet lover and I’m not looking to give it up anytime soon. But after coming home from Taizé, I am continuing to make efforts to curb my usage of it, like by turning off my phone while I pray, leaving it in my purse when hanging out with a friend or just listening to the sounds of the city when walking home from work, instead of blasting music. It’s hard to pull yourself away sometimes, but when I do, I feel so refreshed and not as overwhelmed by the busyness of life.

It’s amazing the beautiful, normal, everyday things you can miss while being sucked in by technology; I want to intentionally choose to miss out on less of these things.

-Dana Rademacher

A Word on Charleston

I’m someone who, though I love words (oh do I love words) routinely feels like words can’t get at the immensity of the situation. I often feel like this when talking about God, strange as that may be for a preacher to say.

I definitely felt like this after I heard the news about Charleston.

I was particularly turned off by the performative posting happening on my Facebook feed, and was internally struggling with what it meant to stay silent in our social media infused world versus contributing to the frenetic buzz that followed Charleston (and seems to have been quickly replaced by posts about Father’s Day).

I was both comforted and challenged by my colleague in Houston, Brad Fuerst’s post:

  • You get caught up into a visceral divine compassion when the pain of others has a purchase on your life. IMHO maybe set aside the opportunistic punditry. For now, set aside the quibbling over semantics. Set aside platforms and broken agendas and finger pointing and conjecture…for as long as it takes to be tuned into God’s sweet and painful song of compassion. This, I think, might be what the pained and grieving and accused need most from you now: to listen…with compassion…with your heart.

I, too, decided to stay silent.

Instead I’ve been listening, to the still small voice in me that I trust is Spirit, and to some very thoughtful pieces that have been posted. I’ve been talking with those I love and respect, but mostly just praying. Because I feel sad. So sad. And I feel paralyzed. And hopeless. And angry.

If you haven’t yet watched John Stewart’s commentary a day after the shooting, please take a look. And then read Bishop Eaton’s message to the ELCA.

Racism is indeed a gaping wound in this country that refuses to heal, and that we pretend doesn’t exist. It is a structural sin, and we who are complicit need to renounce that sin. It’s present in our church in so many ways. This young man’s family is a part of an ELCA church. It’s present in white lives in so many ways.

We have work to do, brothers and sisters. I have work to do.

I differ with John Stewart on one point, and that is his hopelessness. I watch the way Mother Emmanuel church is responding – the way the black church is responding – and I find hope in their witness. Forgiveness and Justice Seeking happening hand in hand. I’ll take my cues from them, and encourage you to do the same.

When one of us suffers, we all suffer. And when one of us experiences healing, so do we all. Let that admonition from Paul be our sustenance and guide in these days.

When the frentic posting has stopped, that’s when our long, slow work towards healing begins. Listen. Pray. Simmer. Get angry. Stay focused. Talk to people you know and respect, especially people of color. Keep your eyes open for ways to act, and then do it.

We are the only hands and feet and beating heart that Christ has on this earth. Let’s use ours to the glory of God, for the reconciliation of God’s people, and the healing of God’s good earth.

May it be so.

Pastor Kate

Chipped Vessels

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I recently traveled to the ecumenical monastic community in Taize, France (called “Taize”) with LCM’s small student vision team. This community is fascinating for a number of reasons; it’s most known for it’s contemplative worship and music, and it’s also a point of pilgrimage for hundreds if not thousands of young adults across the world EACH week. Most interesting and inspiring to me, however, is its inception as a place of reconciliation –a community born in a call to respond to the Jewish refugee crisis in 1940 – and the way that community lives out it’s call to reconciliation now.

One of the ways the brothers of Taize support this ministry is by selling pottery. I purchased this beautiful blue chalice and paten (cup and plate) to be used for communion, and shared by LCM and the community of Grace University Lutheran Church (see above). All sorts of beautiful metaphors were stirring in my mind. And then, despite carrying it on, and lugging it on trains, buses and planes, on the way home it chipped.  Which was deeply disappointing to me. After some thought, however, I decided to save the plate, and use it anyway.

What a more fitting tribute to our shared humanity, our brokenness as individuals, and the way we are gathered together as Christ’s body.

Our community at LCM has long prided itself as being a place of theological and political diversity, and this year we struggled with how to live that out. There was some discord, and some division, We are, as humans and human community, almost always in need of reconciliation. We own that.

And we also proclaim that it’s into those chipped vessels, those broken places, and those cracks that God’s light shines, with power and purpose.

The team of students that traveled to Taize was called by their peers to explore a Christian community different than our own. They were also charged with bringing back and integrating those learnings into our community. After we left Taize, we spent a good chunk of our (one!) day in Paris reflecting on our year as a community, and what we might bring back so that LCM can continue growing into a thriving, generative community that bears witness to God’s love on campus.

We talked for a long time about theological diversity, what it means to claim a particular theology and still make room for difference, how we’re all (as in ALL of us) still figuring out how to do that well, and how we can to that better in the coming year. Going into our broken places is hard, and without this trip, I doubt we would have had time and space for this conversation.

We don’t yet have the answers, but again, Taize may have something to teach us. When asked about their mission of reconciliation and how they live that out, Brother Emille said that they “trust, and pray.”   While that honestly seemed to be a bit naïve to me at first, when faced with our own situation it seems like the best way to proceed; trusting in God and our community that we’ll work together to bind up the broken pieces, and rooting ourselves in prayer as our starting point. I pray that it’s as simple, and as complicated, and as deep as that.

In Anthem, Leonard Cohen croons,

“Ring the bell

that still can ring.

Forget

Your perfect offering.

There is a crack

A crack

In everything.

That’s how the light gets in.

That’s how the light gets in.

This chip, this crack, in our paten/plate will continue to remind me of our time at Taize, and our striving to experience reconciliation. In the meantime, we also trust and pray that God shows up in our cracks, shining so much light and beauty and hope into our lives, into your lives, and into this world.
May it be so.

Pastor Kate