Hush, O World, Please Just Hush...

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John Hudson, pastor of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Sherborn and a former colleague in ministry here in Concord, blogs at Sherborn Pastor.  His most recent post, following on the the tragedy in Newtown, CT, is worthy of the attention of all of us who communicate through the social media.

Hush, O World, Please Just Hush

... I get that all of us have thoughts about the event. That’s normal. Yet in 2012 do we really have to immediately share these ideas so publically, so instantaneously, so loudly, on Facebook and on Twitter? On “The Today Show” and “Fox and Friends”? From pulpits and in press conferences? I am spiritually suffocating under the weight of our national inability to be thoughtful anymore, to be silent, if just for one second, when it comes to our plugged in lives.

Then there is also another weirdness in our culture to lay on top of all this. Why do we have to now so vicariously, digitally, quickly enter into the suffering of others? Is it about them? Is it about us? The motives may be good but the results are unsettling. This too has haunted me in the days after Newtown.

It is as if none of us knows how to be silent anymore. How to possess an unshared opinion or thought. How to keep raw and unformed ideas to ourselves for just awhile. How to hold a precious and tender hope or grief between us and our God in silent prayer. How to give ourselves and others the silent space they need to just be. Instead we now bury each other in an avalanche of digital information with no time to pause or ponder or be still...

 (Read the complete post here)

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