There must be times when we are here

as though absent, gone beyond words
into the woven shadows
of the grass and flighty darknesses
of leaves shaking in the gifts of the skies, and beyond
the weariness of engines and our own heart,
our wrongs grown old unforgiven.

The Silence by Wendell Berry (Collected Poems 1957-1982 ) p111

IDEA:

Think of the number of remote control devices in your life...

Just in case you weren't feeling too old today,

this will certainly change things.

Each year the staff at Beloit College in Wisconsin

puts together a list

to try to give the faculty a sense of the mindset

of that year's incoming freshmen.

The people who are starting college this fall

across the nation

were born in 1982.

• They have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan Era

  and probably did not know he had ever been shot.

• They were prepubescent when the Persian Gulf War was waged.
• Black Monday, 1987 is as significant to them

  as the Great Depression.

• There has been only one Pope.
• They were 11 when the Soviet Union broke apart

  and do not remember the Cold War.

• They have never feared a nuclear war.
• They are too young to remember

  the space shuttle blowing up.

• Tianamen Square means nothing to them
• Bottle caps have always been

  screw off and plastic.

• Atari predates them,

  as do vinyl albums.

• The expression

  "You sound like a broken record"

  means nothing to them.

• They have never owned a record player.
• They have likely never played Pac Man

  and have never heard of Pong.

• They may have never heard of an 8 track.
• The Compact Disc was introduced

  when they were 1 year old.

• As far as they know,

  stamps have always cost about 33 cents.

• They have always had an answering machine.
• Most have never seen a TV set with only 13 channels,

  nor a black-and-white TV.

• They have always had cable.
• There has always been VCR,

  but they have no idea what BETA is.

• They cannot fathom not having a remote control.
• They were born the year that

  Walkmen were introduced by Sony.

• Roller-skating has always meant

  inline for them.

• Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show.
• They have no idea when or why

  Jordache jeans were cool.

• Popcorn has always been cooked in the microwave.
• They have never seen Larry Bird play.
• They never took a swim

  and thought about Jaws.

• The Vietnam War is as ancient history to them

  as WWI, WWII and the Civil War.

• They have no idea that Americans

  were ever held hostage in Iran.

• They can't imagine what hard contact lenses are.
• They don't know who Mork was

  or where he was from.

• They never heard:

  "Where's the beef?"

  "I'd walked a mile for a Camel" or

  "de plane! de plane!"

• They do not care who shot J.R.

  and have no idea who J.R. is.

• The Titanic was found?

  They thought we always knew where it was.

• Michael Jackson has always been white.
• Kansas, Chicago, Boston, America, and Alabama

  are places, not groups.

• McDonalds never came in Styrofoam containers.
• There has always been MTV.
• They don't have a clue how to use a typewriter.

Have you been hearing the "dumb men" jokes going around lately?

What do men consider housecleaning?

Lifting their feet so you can vacuum under them.

How do you get a man to do sit-ups?

Put the remote control between his toes.

Okay, enough.

Let's stay with the remote control for a minute.

Fact is,

we're not relating to our appliances the way we used to.

When was the last time you dialed a phone

in which you actually used a dial...

What ... five, 10 years ago?
Everything is touch-tone now,

and most kids think that dial phones went out with the dinosaurs.

When was the last time you typed a letter?

True story:

Becky,

a high-school senior here in Tucson,

gets a letter from her grandfather

in which he thanks her for her beautiful letter,

and asks her what kind of a typewriter she used

to create such a beautiful script.

"Grandpa,"

she wrote back,

"I've never used a typewriter in my life."

Word-processing makes typewriters look like

throwbacks to the age of linotypes and teletypes.

And do you recall your final trip to turn on the television?

That is, an actual walk to the TV set to turn the switch by hand?

Okay, maybe the battery on your remote went dead the other day,

and you HAD to switch to manual control.

No doubt that walk to the set seemed like a headache and a hassle!

These days we have a remote control for everything:

TVs, VCRs, CD players,

camcorders, cable boxes, stereos,

satellite dishes, model airplanes ...

even gas fireplaces!

Tired of having to move your body to your player piano

in order to change music or lower the volume?

No problemo!
Now you can operate your piano by remote

from up to 100 feet away,

including going through walls (www.pianocommand.com).

And how about that irritating irrigation and industrial equipment?

Do you want to control your

water system, pump, conveyor, light or alarm

from a distance?

A company called Remote Control Technology

can set you up with just about any type of

long-range, license-free, rugged, low-cost

wireless handheld remote control device (www.remotecontroltech.com).

But maybe your problem is that

you can't keep track of your controllers.

Well, if your remote has become remote,

don't despair!

A young girl named Natalie has invented a

"Remote Control Finder."

Facing the problem of never being able to find her channel-flipper,

she taped a sound button to her remote,

and also taped a button to her TV.

That way, when the remote is lost,

she presses the TV button,

and the remote beeps.

It's a kind of

remote control

remote control!

"I think that my invention can help the world,"

she boasts.

"People won't ever have to search and search

for their remote controls again!"

(www.parkmaitland.org).

And George W. says he's compassionate...

Silliness aside,

we have clearly come into an era of

remote control relationships

with our electronic appliances.

We like to push a button from across a room,

factory or field,

and get an instant and immensely pleasing result.

Remote control even allows us to

dial into our desktop PCs

and act as if we were working at the terminal.

New technology enables us to have complete control,

and run PC applications, file transfers and system maintenance

from a distance (www.pcsdata.com).

So remote technology allows us to gain complete control,

and we love it.

But this craziness for controllers raises a troubling issue of

whether we have come to expect

remote control spirituality

as well.

I think it may set us up a bit...

because in our everyday world

to be so in control

simply points out to us...

bold faces for us...

highlights for us...

how out of control we really are.

And this is not a convenience issue --

it's a big problem.

Prayer

"is not a way to get what we want to happen,

like the remote control that comes with the television set,"

writes Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., in her book Kitchen Table Wisdom.

A very ill patient of hers was told by his cancer doctor that

there was nothing more that could be done for him medically.

The physician then said,

"I think you'd better start praying."

For this cancer doctor,

prayer was a kind of last resort ...

...a "what-the-heck" effort when

"effective" treatments had been exhausted ...

a final referral to the "divine physician" ...

a desperate stab at the religious remote control

with hope for an instant and immensely pleasing result.

So what is prayer anyway?

These remote control devices are handy.

No doubt about it.

But here's the deal:

Prayer is not about getting control;

it is about giving up control.

"I think that prayer may be less about asking for the things we are attached to,"

asserts Rachel Remen,

"than it is about relinquishing our attachments in some way.

It can take us beyond fear,

which is an attachment,

and beyond hope,

which is another form of attachment.

It can help us remember

the nature of the world and the nature of life,

not on an intellectual level

but in a deep and experiential way.

When we pray,

we don't change the world,

we change ourselves"

("Prayer," Kitchen Table Wisdom [New York: Riverhead Books, 1996], 270-271).

Prayer takes us beyond our fearful and hopeful attachments

to a deeper, newer, more experiential understanding

of our lives, our world

and our Creator.

As a result,

prayer becomes a transformational experience:

We change,

and we leave in the hands of God

how much else is going to change.

Psalm 41 takes this same tack

into the heart of personal holiness.

While today's passage is certainly a prayer for healing from sickness,

it goes far beyond the "remote control" expectations of so many people.

The psalm lifts up the importance of

considering the poor,
having strength during persecution,

(remember the largest persecutor we must deal with is

our base self that wants us to believe

life is about us

and we're at the center of the universe)

living with integrity,
and enjoying life forever in the presence of God.

It remembers

"the nature of the world and the nature of life,

not on an intellectual level

but in a deep and experiential way."

According to the psalmist,

prayer is not a remote control command

for instant healing,

but is instead a way to

put ourselves in harmony with God

and his creation.

This is a maddening message to hear

when we've been punching the religious remote for years.

We want so much:

healing and wholeness,

happiness and peace,

strength and success.

We pray for these things,

and we ask ourselves in our more meditative moments,

"There's nothing wrong with any of these requests ...

is there, really?"

Well, no, there isn't.

But the truth is that

we set ourselves up for disappointment when we

expect God to change the world

according to our vision.

completely justified in expecting God to

work transforming changes in us.

Maybe God has a different vision of

healing, wholeness, happiness,

peace, strength and success

than we do.

"When we pray,"

reflects Rachel Remen,

"we stop trying to control life

and remember that we belong to life."

Prayer is an opportunity

to experience humility

and to recognize grace,

to see ourselves as human

and to see God as

omnipotent, omniscient

and altogether good and gracious.

"Once,

when I was lying on an operating table waiting for anesthesia,

one of my surgeons took my hand

and asked if I would join him

and his operating team

in a prayer.

Startled, I nodded.

He gathered the team around the operating table for a moment of silence,

after which he quietly said,

'May we be helped to do here whatever is most right.'"

That's a simple but powerful petition.

Remen felt her fears about the surgical outcome

slip away after that prayer,

and she went under anesthesia

holding on to those few words

with the deepest sense of peace.

She knew that in that high-tech operating room --

one probably full of remote controls --

she was in touch with a power

that was in supreme control.

Those simple words helped her to embrace life,

to find a peaceful home in any outcome,

and to remember that

there may be reasons

beyond reason itself (271).

Let's get on track,

fellow people of prayer.

We wander in the wilderness

when we expect God to change

our medical diagnosis,

our career path,

our teenager's behavior,

our church's membership,

our dating prospects, or

our political leadership.

We find the path of promise, however,

when we finally allow God to change us ...

when we drop the remote and say,

"Here I am, Lord. Control me."

Willing to die,
you give up
your will, keep still
until, moved
by what moves
all else, you move.

Poem by Wendell Berry (Collected Poems 1957-1982 )
Harper Collins, Canada, 1995 p145