My Multitasking Soul

"Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory.  My mind isn't going—so far as I can tell—but it's changing."  So begins Nicholas Carr's Atlantic essay, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"  In his 2008 article in the Atlantic magazine, he describes the shifting of his own thought patterns; how he once could delve easily into long bouts of prose, but now finds his mind trailing off after skimming only a few pages.  As a writer he is probably the first pioneer to applaud the instant wonders of Google searches, information-trails, and hyperlinks ad infinitum.  He just wonders aloud about the cost.

University of Virginia English professor Mark Edmundson is another voice attempting to articulate the current cultural ecosystem, and the minds, souls, and relationships it cultivates.  In an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education (Vol. 54. Issue 27) he attempts to describe the turbo-charged orientation of his students to life around them.  "They want to study, travel, make friends, make more friends, read everything (superfast), take in all the movies, listen to every hot band, keep up with everyone they've ever known... They live to multiply possibilities.  They're enemies of closure... [They] want to take eight classes a term, major promiscuously, have a semester abroad at three different colleges, [and] connect with every likely person who has a page on Facebook."  Edmundson argues that for all the virtues of a generation that lives the possibilities of life so fully, there are detriments to the mind that perpetually seeks more and other options.  For many, the moment of maximum pleasure is no longer "the moment of closure, where you sealed the deal," but rather, "the moment when the choices had been multiplied to the highest sum...the moment of maximum promise."

I have found a phrase in Latin that summarizes the idea that the way my mind and soul is oriented is the way my life is oriented.  Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi is an axiom of ancient Christianity, meaning, the rule of worship is the rule of belief is the rule of life.  It also harkens back to four decades ago, studying Rational Behavior Therapy. That is, the way a person is oriented in worship (whatever it might be that they focus on most devotedly) orients the way they believe and, in turn, the way they live.  In this cultural ecosystem  where I seem to be tempted to worship choices and possibilities. Where the virtue of good multitasking has replaced, at times, my virtue of singleness of heart, it is understandable that I am both truly and metaphorically "all over the place"—mentally, spiritually, even bodily, in a state of perpetual possibility-seeking.  No one that knows me well, can say “never a truer confession shared about himself.”

Of course, the ancient Christians who first repeated the idiom, Lex orandi lex credendi lex vivendi, did so with Christ in mind as the subject, aware that the Son of God was the only object of worship who could ever quiet their restless souls.  Before any formal creeds were written, the early church held this adage, knowing that the essence of their theology would rise from their acts of adoration, thanksgiving, and petition.  And they knew that the ways of their worship, the things they said when they prayed, not only defined their ultimate beliefs, but ultimately defined their lives.

I am reminded and realize afresh; the same is true of my life, at age 69, no matter my object of worship.  That which claims the most thorough part of my heart, soul, mind, and strength both reflects and shape my life.  It’s only recently that I have discovered living in this late season of life, that the greatest commandment comes with great difficulty, that focusing my heart, mind, and soul on one thing is a challenge met with a constant parade of options vying for my attention.  Yet the God who longs to gather me, whose arm is not too short to save (even from myself), nor ear too dull to hear, is the same yesterday and today.

What's more, the distracted soul is hardly unique to the age of Google.  There was a time when the ancient church father Augustine of Hippo ( I read his Confessions each day ) defined his soul as "too cramped" for God to enter.  He prayed that God might widen it, seeing too that it needed to be emptied.  "You prompt us yourself to find satisfaction in appraising you," he prayed.  "[Y]ou made us tilted toward you, and our heart is unstable until stabilized in you." Of course, such satisfaction in worship is not likely if God is known as one of many possibilities in a never-ending, ever-expanding web of activities and diversions.  If faith is only a part of my life, then it has become as optional as pursuing one more hyperlink or skimming one more article.  A new prayers for me is that I  fully approach the God of all possibilities find rest and focus, wisdom—and indeed, possibility—for my soul.  As I worship, so will I live.