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Happening ... in the Local Church
For several years a common sight has left me with a question. Why do so many joggers wear earphones? I do not jog or run, but I enjoy walking, and I like to hear what is going on around me. A friend who has run for decades has told me he, too, finds this phenomenon puzzling. I am sure that some of these plugged-in joggers could give me an answer. But more important than hearing the world around me, the time I spend walking allows me to think and reflect. I certainly don’t mean my thinking is profound. Walking is when I came up with the name for our first retriever. It is also when I may develop the central thought for a homily, or it becomes a time for prayer.
The joggers I describe connect to a broader cultural phenomenon. The fact is that in our fast-paced, post-industrial society, our experience of surround sound, or noise, is everywhere. What began as elevator music we now hear in every store and restaurant, in every time our telephone call is put on hold, at every extended ring tone of a cell phone and in the volume of the user’s voice in any setting, and in the volume of the CD player in the car stopped beside us at a traffic light which is so loud our cars vibrate. We do not find ourselves comfortable with our thoughts or the act of thinking. Perhaps we have no thoughts. Certainly we have no thought for others. Wrapped up with our empty selves, we tell ourselves noise is a good substitute for thinking.
One of the directions Jesus frequently gives us is that those who have ears should hear. He does not mean just any sound, much less noise. Jesus means we should hear God.
A variation on this is when we are told by Jesus that for our lack of faith, God will remove our ability to see and hear and, thus, understand. That point is made when God calls Isaiah. God does this because the Israelites have not listened and been faithful to him. In the Hebrew Testament, they refuse to hear the prophecy of exile. Jesus tells the disciples he uses parables because the people do not understand. The people lack faith in God and that condition has consequences.
Behaviors such as these raise another question, a more serious question: Why do so many of us prefer to hear deception, noise and lies rather than the truth God gives us? For too many, the question will go unanswered because it is never heard.
This guest editorial was written by Deacon Jim MacDougall, the permanent deacon at St. Lawrence Parish, Muncie, and assigned by Bishop William L. Higi to prison ministry.