Noise!

I was recently the recipient of a birthday gift – to my wife, Amparo. That is, she received the gift of an overnight stay at a nice, Colorado hotel and casino and I was allowed to go along for the ride.

The hotel was wonderful and in a beautiful mountain location, but there’s not much to do but gamble. So I spent a few hours playing a poker machine. I don’t bet much so I lost only a few bucks in a couple of hours playing.

But after an hour or so of sitting in front of a garish machine – carefully programmed, I presume, to allow you just enough wins to keep you in your seat – I began to be bothered without knowing exactly why. Then it hit me. The noise!

Gaudy, Flashing Lights

Besides the noise and gaudy, flashing lights from dozens of slot machines and similar devices – including a machine-gun like racket from every machine that pays even a small amount – music was also blaring amid the chatter of players and casino employees. For me, it was a metaphor for modern life.

There is the noise of everyday life from traffic, jet planes, telephone and personal-to-person conversations, and the blare of TVs and radios, plus the “noise” from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, email, texts, Netflix, Prime Video, online orders.

How could we not be distracted from “real life?” How could we find time for quiet reflection and thoughtfulness?

So, who needs quiet reflection and thoughtfulness? We all do, in my opinion, now more than ever. “Real life” requires thoughtfulness to avoid being carried away in the stream of “what’s happening now.” To avoid simply adopting whatever theories and attitudes are currently in vogue. To be able to think through problems and challenges. To be conscious of what’s happening in the real world and our part in it. And, of course, to preserve the capacity for faith and the search for God.

Tuning In, and Out

So how to do that? I’m no expert, but I believe learning what to tune in and what to tune out is part of the answer. We have to ask ourselves what in the social and other media is useful for a fulfilling life and what isn’t and act accordingly.

And maybe it also includes people, not that we should discriminate according to the “usefulness” of others, but that we should consider whether the others we associate with are more toxic than contributive to their, and our, wellbeing. For people searching for God, however, the standard is always love and the question, “What does love require?”

Personally, I believe it’s useful in the search for God to set aside during each day a specific time alone, in silence, to contemplate God and our relationship with God. Does that sound creepy or weird? It shouldn’t, because contemplative prayer has been part of human spirituality, across several religions, for centuries.

Buddhists are famous for meditation, of course, but people seeking God in the Christian tradition also have a rich history of meditative prayer, and there’s a difference. Meditation involves layers of quiet reflection, a good thing in itself. Christian meditation, on the other hand, is centered in God.

Christians have Jesus as a model. Although his life was extremely active, according to the New Testament, he often took time for meditative prayer, apparently going off to the desert by himself to do so. And when talking with his disciples about prayer, he recommended “going into your room, shutting the door and praying to your Father in secret.”

Centering Prayer

For a couple of years, I’ve been practicing what is called “Centering Prayer,” having learned it from the books and videos of Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk who died in 2018. I was also exposed to it through my brother, Richard Carney, a priest who learned, practiced and taught it late in life. He died in 2008.

For those of you who are interested, all of Keating’s books and videos are listed in the article on Keating in Wikipedia. Every few months, I watch one of his videos on YouTube (it’s not always just a “noise machine)” as a reminder of what’s important to know, do, and not do, in the practice of centering prayer.

Every person may have a preference on how to make time for reflection and thoughtfulness. Among other things, it’s important for learning how to manage the noise.