Resonance

Dear WRC,

Well, somehow school starts next week. I’m not really sure how, but we’re here already. And if the whiplash of realizing summer is over isn’t enough, we’re about to step hard on the gas pedal of our collective lives as we lurch into this new season. It seems like things are just moving faster and faster and faster, doesn’t it? Like a camp song that speeds up with each new verse until no one can keep up anymore, every time we feel like we get a handle on things they hit a new gear. There is constant pressure to keep up, to become more efficient and productive, and to adapt to an accelerated rate of change technologically and socially. Technological advancement continues to save us time, and yet more than ever we feel the sense that we need to catch up. And the result of all of this is a growing sense of anxiety and guilt. German social theorist Hartmut Rosa calls the result “alienation.” Life is moving so fast that we feel more on the surface of it than in it. Things are moving so quickly that we don’t necessarily know how to live the good life in the present, but we have a sense that if we can just gather enough resources now (money, experience, degrees, capital), then we can live whatever full life we want to in the future. The result of this unfettered acceleration is a sense of disintegration, of alienation from community, relationship, God, and even ourselves. Do you know that feeling? It’s a sickening and disorienting feeling that leaves us feeling anxious and lost. Rivers Cuomo sang it well: “The world has turned and left me here.”

If this alienation is caused by unbridled acceleration, then you might be tempted to think that the solution would be to slow down. That may be the case, but Rosa is careful to point out that the problem isn’t specifically the speed, but the alienation from connections to the world and others. The solution then isn’t necessarily to slow down, but to find ways to relate differently to the world, others, ourselves, and even time itself. The path forward is to cultivate what Rosa calls “resonance.”

Have you ever had an experience where your whole being seems to resonate? When time isn’t sped up or used more effectively but made full and thick? For many, these are experiences when relationships are attended to, when we reconnect with God’s creation, when we get back into our own bodies, when we find ourselves moving with the grain of God’s ways. In fact, our unique Christian contribution to the conversation may be to point out that what Jesus describes as his “abundant life,” is the way that living in his ways moves us along at the resonant frequency of the universe he so lovingly created, sustains, and is working to redeem.

As things speed up again this fall, how can we work to tune ourselves to resonance? Well, the first step is recognizing it when it happens, and the second step is seeking it out. I’d love to hear about some of the places you’ve experienced resonance this summer. Here are a few places where I have in the last couple weeks:

·                     Gathering for breakfast with six of you at Country Café to laugh and share life.

·                     Singing loud and dancing out the motions of VBS songs with parents and kids alike.

·                     Sitting around the Memorial Room and talking with other parents about the joys and

                    difficulties of parenting and getting to pray with and for them.

·                     Stand up paddleboarding with Owen at Camp Brookwoods, feeling the rhythm of the

                    water, balancing together, and laughing every time we fell—whether it was on purpose or not.

·                     Gathering for worship with friends and singing an old song, long-imbued with meaning.

What would be on your list? How can you pay attention to spaces of resonance this fall? What

would it take to find a few more?

In Christ,

    Pastor Andy