Have you ever found yourself living unexpectedly without power for several days? Bishop G. Porter Taylor tells of coming home one Sunday evening to a surprise.
When I opened the door of our house, I didn't hear the customary noises: no CD's, no TV's, no clicking of computer keys. Instead, there was a mechanical silence broken only by murmurs of voices. I went into the living room and all became clear; the power was off. My family was gathered around the fireplace with oil lamps, candles, and flashlights reading the newspaper and just taking about the routine matters of daily life.
Our power stayed off the rest of Sunday and all of Monday and most of Tuesday. . . I noticed how slow life became and also how mutual life became. I was no longer "productive" without power to run my computer for very long or adequate light to work at my desk. Making coffee with a Coleman stove just
takes longer. However, the slowness enables us to taste the moment. Henry David Thoreau writes in Walden: 'It is life near the bone where it is sweetest.' He means that when we live a more elemental life without our constant distractions or preoccupations, we have a better change of being present and fully alive. We aren't trying to get to the next thing so we can get to the next thing on our list. We're just making coffee or building the fire or reading the book.
The cost of speed could be attentiveness. When you slow down, you become nailed to the present moment. You begin to see what's in front of you; you feel the coldness of an April winter day on your skin; and you give thanks for the sheer goodness of hot coffee perked on a Coleman Stove. I have to say, it is also a gift to get away from the screens in our lives which in some sense remove us from primary experience. Having blank computers and blank televisions invites us to look at the incarnated world again for the first time.
In addition, our lives became much more communal out of necessity. We couldn't go to our separate rooms because we didn't want to freeze. We all had to get near the fire because it was the only source of heat. I looked at my family all wrapped in blankets reading books and talking about the day, and I thought, these are the ties that have bound people together throughout the ages. People experience their common life together: gathering around fires or the well or the common green; working together; raising children together, finding their way together; this is how they found communion.
I do not want to be Amish. Lord knows I was elated to come home Tuesday and see our lights blazing. However, I also do not want to forget the gift of attentiveness and mutuality that can be built into the fabric of our lives. We do not have to lose electricity to reclaim these gifts.
I'm not so sure. The modern world has us going around in such circles, that we find it almost impossible to get off the merry-go-round without the help of a power failure. Your thoughts?