Sabbath vs. the Smartphone

Updated on Friday, June 3, 2011 at 9:23AM by Ed Lucas

The iMac is well used, but not so with the phoneNow, I might be the guy who does a range of electronic media jobs for JEM. And it might be true that last year’s JEMscape was quite different than this year’s because of all the new online presence we have now. I am thankful for the praise that has come my way because of it. But it is kind of paradoxical to me. 

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Merry Countercultural Christmas!

I enjoyed Christmas in its modern American form for the first twelve years of my life. Then, one year, at the age of 13, I had three Christmases to take part in. Having just been reunited with my mother’s side of my family after not knowing them for all those years, the newness of fitting into their Christmas in addition to that of my life at home, and again at my grandparents’ place, I was in Christmas heaven for a kid. Or so it would seem to someone reading the surface. That Christmas season of 1986 was the time when the special day, and the season that wrapped around it, broke. I was made to participate in all the tree selection, trimming, going to church, shopping, wrapping, and all that, but this time in multiple households, one of which was 100 miles away. That was the first crack in the wall for me, the first time the commercial Christmas overwhelmed me.

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Less is More

In the time after September 11, 2001, I was beginning to understand myself as part of a larger world. Rather than go to sleep the next day, I was beginning an awakening. At the age of 27, nearly 28 then, I was on time with having my worldview radically revised.

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