Anxiety as a Feature
Increasingly, one hears it said that the inducement of anxiety is not an accidental byproduct of social media; anxiety is a feature, not a bug. The anxious user will click more, seeking ever-more affirmation, finding instead dismissive comments, and so forth. A friend writes that he is considering dropping out of the whole thing.
That was a comment in his latest blog, which is slightly ironic: we who write blogs want more subscribers, more readers. But there is a world of difference (literally, the world) between reader feedback and social media clicks. When you write me, we are fellow creatures in the real world who happen to be using email. When you click and like or dislike my Media-Formerly-Known-As-Twitter post about one of these emails, we are in a merely virtual world.
It is not a hard question for me, which world I want to be a part of.
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Some anxiety, however, is built into the physical human world, and these weeks are often specially fraught. Here are a few old thoughts about dealing with the anxieties of December.
1. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, sunset has gotten as early as it’s going to get. The evening will soon begin to lengthen as it stretches towards summer.
2. Christmas doesn’t really start for another couple of weeks. It’s okay to wait for it. There are very few things you really have to get done.
3. You have all the time you have: there is no more! Lacking all the time there is, you can’t do everything. (This has become something I say to myself daily: “I have all the time I have.”)
4. Christmas doesn’t end until Epiphany, January 6. The week after Christmas is a great time to write letters and have parties. Ditto the first week of January.
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A younger colleague was sorting through impressions of the hymns we had just sung at a “lessons and carols” service. Many Christmas hymns aim to teach us how to be children awaiting the birth of the Christchild. We sing about being children, about growing in obedience to God, about sleeping in a cradle (as God the newborn baby did), and so forth.
Of course we must mature into Christlikeness. But it is also Christlike to eat and sleep and smile.
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Out & About. This Sunday (Dec. 17) at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, I am teaching an Advent class on “An Adult Christ at Christmas.” It meets at about 10:20 in the Great Hall. The text is Luke 2:21 to the end of the chapter; we’ll consider how this Christmas story is a proclamation of the death of Christ.
For your Christmas reading: get Morte d'Urban by J. F. Powers. Father Urban (of the title) is a priest of the order of St. Clement, a group known for nothing much. Urban has designs to improve them. He is amazingly successful with wealthy donors and nonstop work; then it all collapses after his head intersects with a golf ball. Powers, a favorite of Garrison Keillor (his fellow Minnesotan), wrote deadpan, drily humorous stories and novels; Morte d’Urbanwon the National Book Award in 1963—then it fell into ill-deserved obscurity. We will discuss it at 5pm on Sunday, January 14, at the Good Books & Good Talk seminar at St. Matthew’s. But it’s worth reading even if you don’t live in Dallas.
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I am to teach the Christian Ethics course at the Stanton Center starting Sat., Jan. 20. Auditors do various readings prior to each meeting, one of them a Muriel Spark novel, many of them drawn from Christian Ethics: A Guide for the Perplexed. Students needing credit write responses to the readings prior to class also. The main thing is in-person discussion; no final exam, no term paper. Registration begins with an email to Erica Lasenyik: