Diary of a Theologian

A Sunday Prayer

There’s a very simple prayer for Sundays in Morning Prayer. It is in fact a prayer known as a “collect,” which has a short, fixed form. First: God is identified by something in particular that he does or has done. Second: A request is made of God. Third: The purpose of the request is stated. The collect ends by making clear that the prayer is made “through” Jesus. 

Dogs and Smartphones

In the midst of the Camino this spring, I saw something I had not noticed before: a peregrinolooking at his phone. It was a shock of sorts, though I suppose it was inevitable and perhaps surprising that it hadn’t been more common. The practical side of my mind said, I could do that in Dallas; I don’t have to travel to the Camino if I want to walk while scrolling.

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    Back in Dallas, a recent sermon I heard talked about unhappiness. She was giving a not-uncommon snapshot of life today: Alarm goes off. Pick up phone and scroll social media. Eat breakfast while scrolling some more. Go to office and sit in front of a computer and answer a lot of emails. Go home and scroll social media. Walk dog. Eat supper and scroll some more. Watch Netflix. (Etc.)

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    This picture is exaggerated, of course, but most of us will have a slightly guilty sense of recognition even if only for part of it. We know that more fulfilling lives are had when our eyes go a lot of places besides screens. More screen time correlates with more unhappiness, and vice versa. Why? One big reason is our need to look at other people and talk with them. Which brings me to dogs.

    I see a lot of people on the Katy Trail with their dogs—and a lot of them have the leash in one hand while the other holds their smartphone. They’re out with their dog but in some real sense they aren’t with their dog. I don’t know how a dog thinks, but if it were I, I’d be unhappy. “Buster, you were gone all day and now you’re home and you aren’t paying attention to me.”

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    These thoughts of mine—doubtless too judgmental but, dear reader, I’m just being open with you, they have been my thoughts—have received, to my surprise, poetic confirmation. Last week I was reading the May issue of The New Criterion where I found a short poem that began: “My owner stops to watch me, then continues, / as earnest with his toy as I with mine.” I thought: can it really be that a poet is writing about this?

    It goes on: “He doesn’t chew it, though, or lap its edges. / Instead his thumbs, conferring him / divine status, go click-click-click.” 

    It comes to an arresting, slightly embarrassing parallel: “What agitates him so? It’s much the same / as scratching-fits that occupy my ears.” The dog compares it also to moments when he, the dog, sometimes will sit, “nose to the glass,” but won’t respond to his name being called.

    He wishes it were different, wishes his owner’s toy would “go back and leave us alone, two together / so that he can smile on me as he once would.” The poem is called “Pre-social”; the poet is Sunil Iyengar; and you can find it here:https://newcriterion.com/article/pre-social/

    And you might find yourself looking at your toy a little differently. 

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    Fall Dates for Brothers Karamazov seminars (Good Books & Good Talk). The dates have been set for a four-session series on Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. In Dallas, at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Sundays from 5 to 6:30 p.m.:

August 30, Part One

October 11, Part Two

November 1, Part Three

November 29, Part Four

This is how I read a Russian novel, especially for the first time. I keep a list as I read it, putting down every name as it appears, along with a very brief identification, maybe the page number. This is because I have often found myself confused at first, not knowing who was who. But be of good courage! Once you get to about page 50 the genius of the story-teller will catch you up.

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    Out & About. Sunday, July 26, I am to preach at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas (9 and 11:15).

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    That story about the beaver and the Hoover Dam: A friend in New York traced it down. T. R. Reid, in The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution, related the high praise given which was given to Jack Kilby when he received the Nobel prize: that Kilby “had launched the global digital revolution, making possible calculators,computers, digital cameras, pacemakers, the Internet” and so on. Kilby began his lecture with this response: “When I hear that kind of thing,” he said, “it reminds me of what the beaver told the rabbit as they stood at the base of Hoover Dam: ‘No, I didn’t build it myself, but it’s based on an idea of mine.’” Kilby then added that he had heard the beaver story “from Charles H. Townes, an American who won the physics prize in 1964.”