Tag: phone calls

The #1 Vomit-Inducing “Selfie”

A “selfie” is a photo taken of one’s self, by one’s self. It’s the shortened word for “self-portrait”.

Websters Dictionaries made this word the Word of the Year in 2013.

Capturing the occasional “selfie” is no big deal…but  the #1 thing I hate about smart phones is epitomized in this screen shot of the short film entitled “I Forgot My Phone”:

selfie

It’s < The kissing or wedding proposal “Selfie” > (ECK! skin crawling.)

This reaction could also be because I’m not in my twenties.

And I wonder…does this make me rustic and uncultured? 

See the whole short film here featuring Charlene deGuzman. It’s a great 2 minute piece of critique that is so accurate that it hardly fits into the category of satirical exaggeration, and maybe that was the point.

(Really the only unrealistic part is the guy actually making a phone call. I’m not sure that happens too much at all…unless someone is driving, of course. 4-6 p.m. and 8-10 a.m. I think I see a few people making phone calls behind the wheel. Texting has overshadowed realtime voice-to-voice interaction, like email did in the 1990s.)

The piece also emphasizes, by omission, the potential benefits of “forgetting” your mobile phone in order to experience life more fully. See what you think of it.

To be clear, I’m guilty of overusing my phone. Time to update my Rule of Life that includes boundaries here.

 

Direct video link: http://gawker.com/short-film-about-smartphone-overuse-is-smart-poignant-1189811144

So what do you think about the topic?

And Are you pro “selfie”, anti, or somewhere in between. I’m curious. Let me know!

Work and Worship

work work work
working too much?

 

It seems like with too much work, we get in too little worship. Our priorities push it to the side, out of the main focus. That just our relationship with God suffers, but so do all the other ones, right?  Family, friends, and neighbors get less of us. And, what’s left over it’s really our best. Sometimes, it’s our worst. We can be frustrated, exhausted, anxious, or pre-occupied. We’ll take phone calls, instead of carving out time for them. We’ll miss meals, or events because of the demands of our high-paced work-style, which has become a full-blown life-style. Time to unwind, do nothing, or just really enjoy something like a sunset, a wonderful meal, a walk, or talk with the son or daughter, is pushed far into the margins, most of the time, overshadowed by a hectic schedule, and work, work, work.

My pastor brought this sort of thing up today. Yes, some jobs automatically come with a heap of obligations. But, when our living becomes much more about getting things done, than it is about being, in truth, we are robbing ourselves of life itself.

How fascinating that the Hebrew root word for work and worship turn out to be the SAME thing. “Avodah” This suggests that our work isn’t something different than worship, as we typically treat it. Everything we do when we work can be done as a worship practice. Work is offered as worship, and a pleasing sacrifice to God. Perhaps this way, it won’t be so much of a curse to our selves either. Maybe this way, we will make better boundaries because it is in God’s realm. He wishes for us to have abundant life, rest, peace, even as we work at our best for him.

Leave your comments, please :)