Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Life on the road

Well, in case you're wondering how the world works these days, I'm blogging this on a live broadband signal at 78 miles an hour zipping through an illiniois cornfield. How how in the heck is that happening? But it is. So there. We're wired, linked, cross linked in real time all the time everywhere. And sometimes this even makes us connected in the way we mean it in the Leading Causes of Life. All this linking only gives life when it helps us talk to each other about what matters, for we are still powered by stories, roles, narrative. It is connection in which we find coherence, express agency, experience the web of blessing and know hope. And all of those float untethered without connection. But we should reflect a bit on what kinds of electronic connections bring life and which distract from it; which substitute for it, which accelerate its growth. It does not help to reject it like a Luddite. I remember fondly that one of the very finest South African Syrah I've ever tasted is named Luddite (I digress). We use technology for very old purposes--to be in relationship to those that matter and find many that matter in ways that were impossible to know and to have an informed coherence richly fed by knowledge easily gathered once we get the questions right. We experience an expanded reach for our agency.

And now I will go back to talking to John and Niels, sitting in the front seat on our way to Chicago.

Gary

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