Run, Don't Walk, to Get This Book

And Then After You Read It - You Will Want to Walk, Not Run, Everywhere Else

I recently learned of a friend who told their children that if they listened to a certain podcast, the parent would pay their kids $50 each. When I heard it, I thought it was laughable. “Who in their right mind would ever. . . ?” Then I read Carlos Whitaker’s Reconnected: How 7 Screen-Free Weeks with Monks and Amish Farmers Helped Me Recover from the Lost Art of Being Human. Oh. My. Goodness. I probably won’t commit to pay my children $50 to read it. . . but it’s now not outside the realm of possibility. I do know that if I had enough money to give away - there are many, many people I know and love that I would gladly give $50 to if they would commit to reading Whitaker’s book.

This Christian influencer (read: VERY active on social media) chose to take a 7-week hiatus from his cell phone. No contact. As the subtitle indicates, he spent a couple of weeks with monks, a couple of weeks with the Amish, and then several weeks with his family - no cell phone. The lessons he learned, though simple, are life-changing. Whitaker wasn’t, and still isn’t, anti-phones. That’s what I appreciate about the book. He knows we are living in an age where - like it or not - they will be present in our lives. But what he uncovered, for me at least, is the rich and full life that is missed due to our constant use of them.

I cannot recommend this book enough. I won’t promise to give you a crisp 50 dollar bill if you read it, but I have a feeling you, once finished, will be just fine with whatever it cost you to purchase.

To whet your appetite, below are a few of my favorite quotes:

We often say that life is speeding us by. I’d beg to differ and suggest that maybe it’s we who are speeding life by.

But what I love about the difference between seeing and noticing is that it’s possible to see someone without noticing them. To notice someone requires an extra step—that you have your gaze up! To notice a person gets you one step closer to freeing them. This is true because noticing happens after you see them. Beyond that initial moment of simply seeing, what do you notice about who they are and what they believe that can help you go deeper?

Now my prayer was simple: God, help me notice all the ways in which we’ve forgotten how to be human since these screens have become attached to our palms. Show me the beauty of my human experience as I live disconnected for the next several weeks. Surprise me with lessons. Surprise me with you. Amen.

Waiting is what makes space for wondering to happen.

“You have spent the last fifteen years holding the world in your hand and have stopped beholding me in the world.”

How much is the device that you keep in your pocket—or the one you may even be using to read or listen to this book right now—making God smaller than you want him to be? You may not have ever thought about it like this, but stay with me. Perhaps you follow social media accounts that give you tidbits of inspiration here and there—maybe they post Bible verses and cool thirty-second sermon clips with background hype music that give you a little inspiration for the moment. But really, truly, are your screens adding to the greatness of God in your life? Or are they reducing God to a sound bite?

Sharing meals together literally reduces our stress. . . According to survey results from the American Heart Association, 91 percent of parents noticed their family was less stressed when they shared family meals together.

Here’s another thing I think is important for you to know. I’m now back on my phone five and a half hours a day, which means I shaved off about ninety minutes from my previous average. I’m not a hero. There are days I fail and go back to the addiction of seven or eight hours in a day. But now I simply know that there is another way of life, one that tastes better and nourishes me. I now desire that more than the junk food of being on my phone all the time. See, that is the problem. We have forgotten what tastes better, what nourishes us. And I hope that my experiment reminded you of the flavor of life you have been missing. We aren’t ever going to lose these screens. But we can gain our lives back while living with these screens. There is so much life waiting for you to live, right on the other side of Do Not Disturb.

(Picture of book found on Google Images, and linked here.)