Listening to that Still, Small Voice

Day 2 of my new laptop and I still had to identify myself on the first of the two blogging platforms I use. Good thing I wrote my password down somewhere yesterday. Good grief. What a terrible environment we have created, referring to the online world. Passwords and accounts and hackers and thieves, liars, fake news and now "artificial intelligence." It would be comical if it weren't so tragic. It's hard to know how to respond to it sometimes. I don't care about all the bells and whistles they've added to Windows 11. I have disabled "finish setting up your PC." I hope I don't have to get that prompt again. All this continual evolution of technology means to me is more expense and more inconvenience. I had to buy a new laptop and I mean that's all good, I like it fine, but why does the internet technology industry get to have so much control over regular people who just want to live their life? The worldwide web was supposed to bring people together, create community, enable people to reach across the globe and connect with other people. Instead, as far as I'm concerned, it has caused most of us to isolate more and more. We don't have to shop in person, we don't have to bank in person, we can't get information on the phone anymore, instead an automated voice will give you a link to click on and do this and that, and if you don't find out what you called to find out what do you do? What can you do? When I couldn't get my new laptop to connect to wi-fi yesterday I called my internet provider and got no help at all. I told you about it yesterday, just got a recording and an invitation to "chat" with a robot which typed unhelpful sentences and left me to figure out what to do, finally urging me to install an app. You know, a couple of years ago (well, maybe more than a couple now, but let's just go back to 2019) I didn't even know what a "mobile app" was. I didn't even know what an "app" was. Now, of course, preschool children and younger are already using tablets and phones, and everyone except the creators of the technology (I assume they are pretty smart) are getting dumber and dumber. It looks that way to me, anyway. What I keep hearing right now in my spirit is, "Be not conformed to this world," sometimes expressed as, "Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold," and I feel that squeeze, that pressure from the world as I get used to my new laptop. It will take a while. I got that from the first two verses of the 12th chapter of the Apostle Paul's letter to the church in Rome. You can look it up. It's good. I have not watched my usual alternative media talk shows for three days now, and I have become conscious of the most amazing process I have to call "listening to that still, small voice." As a result, I have been more at peace than I have been for quite some time. I live near the Interstate and that's mostly all I hear when I leave my apartment. Only I don't really hear it unless I listen to it. It just drones on continuously, nonstop, night and day, so much so that that has become as silent as it ever gets, which has become the norm for my life since I moved in here in 2008. So last night when I was kind of on the outskirts of town and heard the song of the cicadas, I was kind of almost hypnotized by it. I don't think I'd heard the cicadas yet this entire summer. And the air had been cooling down quite a lot from the mid to upper 90s to what felt like the upper 70s to low 80s. It was a lovely experience I like to imagine was a gift from above to prepare us for the next several days of extreme heat and send us scurrying back into our holes like the mechanized prairie dog at the KU Museum of Natural History in Lawrence (Kansas). I'm so tired of the world sometimes. Just constant noise of hammering and yammering, fighting and striving, competing and comparing, buying and selling. Reminds me of the miser in "The Little Prince" counting his money. In fact, it's probably about time for me to read "The Little Prince" again, or maybe "The Snow Goose." Those are books that can bring you back to life. "Gift from the Sea" is another one. I'm glad I have those books. And, of course, the Bible. I am pretty sure by now I will never read all the books I have piled in my room. I want to read them, but I am a very slow reader. I have been reading "Blue Shoe" all week and am just almost half way through. I was hoping to get back into "Don Quixote" again and read it both in Spanish and English. I am not sure that will happen in what's left of my summer break. Maybe that can be my project beginning the new school year. I have been doing my best to listen to that still, small voice leading me in what I hope is the perfect will of God, and it is a great gift. I am reminded of that term "voluntary isolation" I think I read that Paul Kingsnorth used somewhere, something I was reading online when I looked him up. I have yet to read one of his books, and now I think he is more into podcasts than writing books, I'm not sure. I want to pick his brain some, but I'm still not into podcasts. I'm pretty sure if I ever got into podcasts, I would be totally enveloped in media, and I just don't think I can take it, I really don't. Besides, I'll never run out of things to read, and now the library's having another sale. I have to go on Saturday and/or Sunday. As if I needed one more book. I don't. You know how they say, "You can't be too rich or too thin." I am sure someone has been saying, "You can't have too many books," but don't quote me on that. I've got to start transitioning from summer to fall mode pretty soon, that is, not staying up till 2:00 A.M. every night, not that I'm really ready for that. I'm not. But, I'm going to have to simply return to my servant mode and reorder my time and life to one of work and education and children and what it is I do in life in service to my fellow man. We are such strange creatures, we humans, aren't we? You know it's true. But here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to practice listening to that still, small voice. And I'm going to keep writing every day, if I can. It's a process, it's a path, it's a journey. I don't exactly know where it will take me, but I'm going to follow like Abraham, not knowing where I'm going. I hope some of you will be going with me.