Pause for Prayer: SATURDAY 9/21

I meet with a group of friends who read books together. We read slowly, just a few chapters at a time.  Presently, we're making our way through Thomas Merton's Seeds of Contemplation.  He wrote this in 1961 but many passages are uncannily apt for our own times - and prayer...

"When people live huddled together without true communication, there seems to be a greater sharing, and a more genuine communion. But this is not communion, only immersion in the general meaninglessness of countless slogans and clichés repeated over and over again so that in the end one listens without hearing and responds without thinking. The constant din of empty words and machine noises, the endless booming of loudspeakers end by making true communication and true communion almost impossible. Each individual in the mass is insulated by thick layers of insensibility.  Individuals don't care, they don't hear, they don't think. They do not act, they are pushed. They do not talk, they produce conventional sounds when stimulated by the appropriate noises. They don't think, they secrete clichés."

Lord, we live, huddled,  

    in the world of social media.*

We long to communicate, to be in communion,

    it's what we desire, what we seek

but too often our efforts 

    drown

in countless waves of cliches and slogans

    washing around and within us...

We insulate ourselves 

    from words that embody

        and truth that saves,

    from communion that feeds 

        and nurtures the soul

    from the life that leads

        to your mystery's heart

    where in your knowing us

        we, at last, know ourselves...

Give us the grace, Lord,

    to care as you do

        to hear with your heart,

    to act with your patience

        and speak with your wisdom...

 

But most of all, deliver us, Lord,

    from ourselves to you,

        to communion with you

            and all who seek you,

        and in seeking you

    find their true selves...

 

But most of all, deliver us, Lord,

    from ourselves to you,

to communion with you

    and all who seek you

and in seeking you

    find their true selves...

 

Amen.

 

*-

- 5.17 billion people use social media worldwide,

- Of the world’s population (18 y.o.+)  

    86.1% are active on social media
- Of 5.45 billion internet users, 

    94.9% are active users

- Of of 5.68 billion unique mobile phone users, 

    91% are active users 

(2024 statistics)  

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