Ashley Judd and Wow!

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42432538/ns/today-books/

Above is a link to an interview with Ashley Judd on the Today show from last Tuesday. It's really remarkable the things she has been through and the work it sounds like she does. It's funny (not ha, ha funny) that she sounds very politically correct when discussing different things. For instance she talks about, "God, as I know him." I guess it's really sad in a way. Not because she couches some of her language in what some might consider political correctness, but because some will discount what she says because of it. Her book sounds like it contains a very powerful story. Without reading it myself I am going to recommend it simply based on this interview. If you have been through some of the things that she mentions (growing up in an alcoholic family, neglect, sexual abuse) I think this book may speak to you. Good reading.

Does Technology Enable Relationships?

Have you ever had a conversation with someone looked away for a second and when you look back they are texting someone? PLeeeeeze tell me it's not just me!

I so want to say, "it's not the technology, it's how we use it." Which is right, but it's also wrong. We are a society of short attention spans. Sometimes I think that technology just makes that attention span even shorter. So if you have a relationship with a short attention spanned techno warrior what do you really have? There's even commercials that play on this where two guys are at a table in a cafe and they are texting each other instead of talking. Is that real?

It's kind of like the whole Wii thing where people play tennis on the Wii and think they can really play tennis. Tennis is played with a little round yellow ball, not a wireless joystick. When these same Wii warriors go outside they are dismayed reality. So what? If they got exercise indoors why bother with the real thing? Maybe because the real thing is real? One of my kids cartoon movies, "Wall-E" shows a bunch of people living on a spaceship and they all live in a kind of virtual reality. They are ushered around on floating chairs and don't actually even look at each other unless it's on a screen. Kind of weird...but not far off reality.

So, back to short attention spans and texting.... I don't text. That costs extra. But if I did would I be looking at my phone every 5 minutes like everyone else? Would I sit in meetings with my head down and my thumbs pumping ferverishly? I hope not.

Does technology enable relationships? The mail helps keep people in contact who write letters to each other. The telephone helps keep people in contact who call each other. Maybe the internet could help me keep in contact with my wife and kids if they ever go to Budapest for a summer break? Who knows...crazier things have happened.

Random acts of violence

So I hear there is a woman who has killed her children again. Not that she killed them twice, but that the whole type of event has happened again. What is happening?! We started in the 1980's with Pat Sherrill the first postal worker to go nuts and start shooting. Since then all we have done is pick up steam. People shoot their co-workers, their ex after the divorce, their classmates. No place is immune. We had it happen right here in Knoxville when a loony walked into a church and opened fire.
I can remember talking about it in one of my seminary classes around 1992 and the professor (Glenn Stassen) was saying at that point he had been unable to find any instance of something like that happening in Europe. Well...it has happened since then. So what is going on in society to make people go so nuts that they think opening fire is any kind of alternative?
I can't say that I am entirely sure, but I think it has to do with our expectations of life being so different than life really is. Here's the thing. Life is hard. For some people life is awful...from the time they are born till the time they die all they know is hunger, violence, addiction, and abuse (think of say...a crack whore's baby). For other people born into more "normal" situations think of the rampant physical and sexual abuse that is more and more prevalent in society. Let's make it even more Beaver Cleaver than that. Let's take someone who grows up in a two parent family with 2.5 kids and a golden retriever.
Gotcha. That family doesn't exist. You can't have 2.5 kids. But there is this idealized standard somewhere in our subconscious that says we should be part of a normal family where life is easier than our life is. We see it in stories growing up. We watch it on television shows. We see families that look more appealing than ours in movies. We are bombarded with those same messages without mercy in advertising.
How can we get the message out that the make believe world isn't the real world? Maybe a reality TV show? Maybe we could follow around a "typical American family" and see how they live? Nah...that'd never work.
All the messages out there don't push us all over the limit. I'm not saying they do and I don't know anyone who is saying they do. I think they do help push some people over the limit. Those who are already on the fringe. Take someone who doesn't have a support system. No friends, alienated, loners.
Think about this. For all the random acts of violence we have you never read about a gang member doing this kind of thing. Their violence is targeted (sometimes they mistake their targets, but I've never heard of them going off in a suicidal rage). You don't have mafia hit men going nuts and walking in and shooting up the pizza place. Even those folks have relationships.
So what does all this mean? First, it means make sure you have support so you don't go off the deep end yourself. Second, it means reach out to those around you and make sure they know they are loved and welcomed. Third, if you see a loner...turn off the TV and internet, buy a flack jacket, and take them out to dinner. The life you save may be your own.