https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=L8fJ0If1ICg
And it’s a question of how do you live? Because you can do what I’ve done to a degree. I live on a small holding out in the country and I have friends around me who are similarly kind of alternatively concerned about the thing, the machine. And so we try not to participate too much. And I don’t have a smartphone, I don’t have a TV. So I’m sort of on the edge of it. But you’re still in it all the time. It’s still all around you. You can’t not engage with it. So the question is, what’s your spiritual work? How does that manifest in your life, I suppose? Yeah. I definitely think that, first of all, just being intentional is a first step for most people. At least understanding that that’s going on and now being intentional about your choices and about the things that you attend to. Most of it, I think, has to do with hierarchy. And it’s hard because these technological things, they’re made to basically devour your attention. They’re made to take it all up. But so obviously I don’t think that there’s anything wrong. And to a certain extent, I think Christians will always have to somewhat engage with the system because we’re not, I don’t think Christians are, unless you’re really a monastic and you, but even monasteries are never isolated completely. There’s always a sense in which we’re also meant to radiate in the world in terms of example and in terms of patterns. So I think the best thing would be to be deliberate and to be hierarchical in what is your priority. And so make sure that your family, that’s the, your family is the priority. Your communities are the priority. Create deliberate relationships with people around you. Work towards alternative systems, but not be, I think, I think being wise about it, you know, Christ said, be, you know, be innocent as doves and wise as serpents. And I think this is right now is the time to do that. I made a video about King David and how King David escapes the tyranny of St. Paul, of St. Paul, of, of, that’s hilarious that I said that of King Saul. Who did you say? Cause Saul becomes Paul in his own story. So I get St. Paul, like that’s the problem with symbolism is when things connect in your mind, you might say too much symbolism makes you say that King David is escaping St. Paul. Anyways, so King David tries to escape the tyranny of King Saul and, and by doing that, he becomes everything of the margin. He becomes, he becomes, he associates with these debtors and thieves, you know, he lives in a cave. He pretends to fight for the enemy of King Saul. He, he feigns being crazy. He does all these things that are completely, you know, look like he’s, he’s a strange shifty character. And so I think that we have to start thinking that way. We have to, to not be naive about things, but understand that we also have to be shifty at this moment and be able to, be able to navigate with, with some trickery, you know, the world that is laying itself in front of us. Yeah, yeah. It’s a trickster moment, isn’t it? That’s right. It is. And it’s, there’s an issue of just trying to be in the world, but not of it, which is the thing I keep coming back to all the time. It’s very interesting. I’ve been reading a lot about the desert fathers, the early ascetics recently. And what’s interesting about so many of them, so many of the saints who go off to live in the desert, including Anthony himself, they go off for a period of time, but then they’re called back again. And it’s interesting actually, they, they, you know, it’s, St. Anthony, in St. Athanasius, his life of St. Anthony, he talks about Anthony spending 20 years, you know, first in the tombs and then in this ruined fort, hiding from everybody. And eventually people just break in and force them to come out. And he kind of walks out and he says, Athanasius says he was, he’d been initiated by God, right? So he went through this enormous training period. And then he came out and it was like he was ready to teach now. So he had to teach and he had to go and do his work in the world, whether or not he wanted to. And any other number of saints from St. Cuthbert to St. Coleman here in Ireland have the same thing. They spend their time living in caves or on islands. They try to escape, they do their work, but then when they’re ready, they’re brought back in again. So it’s almost like there’s a balance between the desert and the town, the desert, the kingdom really. You have to get that balance between the world and the kingdom right, even if you’re certainly not ever gonna be a great saint. And so maybe that’s, I keep looking for the challenge in the moment, right? The challenge in the time. What is it that we’re being offered here? What are we being shown? Why is this happening? What’s the challenge for us? And maybe that’s what it is. What’s the balance between the world and the kingdom that you have to somehow achieve? And as you say, it’s a dance, isn’t it? It’s a kind of daily dance to try and not get consumed literally by the machine. But at the same time, you know that you can’t walk away from it entirely wherever you go. You can get a 5G signal in the Amazon now. You know, there’s no escape from it.