austraLasia #2787
 
Spirituality-Technology: what shapes what?

BRATISLAVA: 24 March 2012 --  Yes, I know Bratislava is not part of the EAO Region, but it's where I happen to be as I write this, and two separate incidents have provoked the following reflection: one was evening prayer time, when I realised that I was the only one in the room with a dead-tree version of Evening Prayer (how embarassing can that be in a digital era!) and the second is an article run by the Catholic Herald in the UK which you can access by clicking on the mobile phone above (There, does that make up for the earlier fault?).

But I ask myself - is it technology that is to shape spirituality today or can spirituality possibly help shape technology? That question is emerging in any number of forums, including a number of Salesian forums I have attended (often in the context of Salesian formation but not only).  Wired Magazine ran an article on the five toys that are shaping the world today. Are there similar 'toys' which we could help shape in spiritual terms or which have helped shape our spirituality?
1. The Clock

Don't forget the clock! It hasn't gone away (yet). For most of us the first thing we do and the last, in the day, is to read a set of digits on waking and on going to sleep (or do you have a short prayerful invocation first and last?)

Many a decision we make, no matter how insignificant or world changing, is shaped by what those numbers tell us. It was 12th century monks who invented accurate clocks with the hope of standardising times of prayer.  Can we do something to return the clock to that function in a digital world?  I use a 'consciousness bell' that sounds randomly on my computer. It might startle (or annoy) people in a meeting, since I don'ìt control when it can chime, but it certainly calls attention to a moment of silence! A digital 'Angelus' then? The chime dies away within the space of a Hail Mary.

2. Microphones

Video extension sites and Internet campuses get all the attention these days, but it was the microphone that changed the way we think about almsot anything in Church today. Visit any ancient Church in Europe for example and the pulpit is halfway down the Church. No longer necessary...

New Evangelisation is partly shaped by the ability to project our voices to ever-larger audiences. Large, microphone-powered churches are able to meet needs small ones can’t, but at the same time, by extending the reach of the pulpit, the microphone has also dwarfed the importance of the altar. That technology has no real part to play in the most important and sacred act performed on that altar - which brings us back to the importance, however, of a human proclamation of words, 'digne attente ac devote'.

3. Twitter

There’s a Bible for every platform – PCs, Macs, Android, iPhone, iPad, even Windows Phone and BlackBerry have Bible software with powerful search abilities.

But long before the Bible went digital, it was chopped up into tweet-sized pieces called “verses.” Then verse numbers were added and standardised, once print technology developed. In the early Christian era nobody would have known what a “verse” or a “chapter” was.

Two reflections here: I probably knew how to repeat John 10:10 at ten years of age. But it was just a 'tweet'. It took many yeaqrs to understand that there's an entire narrative holding things together.

Today, verse numbers make all kinds of things possible, but in the end its the narrative that holds things together that's most important. One wonders if we couldn't hold that in mind in the twittersphere too and do our part, at least, to help provide a narrative that holds things together - a Christ-inspired narrative, of course.

4. Personal (Electronic) Publishing

Media ecologists like to say that there has been a movement in communication from oral back to literate (Walter Ong sj for example). In an oral culture, the leader is naturally the oldest person who has accumulated the most information and wisdom. In a literate culture, the leaders are those with money for books and education. In the shift from written texts to printed texts, single leaders like popes and kings lost (some of) their power to Protestants and democracies.

Today the Internet gives everyone the ability to publish. We have blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and more that we can use to share our unfiltered opinions about everything and everyone. The shift to publicly sharing our thoughts, our capacity find 'an audience' ready to receive them, has enormous potential for evangelisation. Have we really taken that seriously?  Have we taken seriously enough the need to form young Salesians who are already naturally 'creators', to use these publishing media for ministry?

5. Mobile Devices

Interesting to note the way that Don Bosco Publications in the UK has 'gone digital'. Maybe, other than Edebé, the largest publishing enterprise in the Salesian world, DB Publications UK comes next in tackling the advance into such a simple things as ebooks. Congrats to them for that!

Which brings me back to yesterday evening's prayer session. One still hears people who tell us that if we read the scriptures from an e-reader or tablet device, it is no longer the Word of God!  Can we really evangelise today's world if we continue along such lines?  Personally I doubt it.

Instead, it is time to get creative with all the opportunities we have now and the many more that will come in the rapidly advancing future. And then there is Web 3.0, shaping up right under our noses and changing all kinds of realities with almost the same kind of 'secrecy' that goes on in a mixture of flour, water and yeast..... but, wait, that's a biblical image too, is it not?