Goin' Mercer…ramblings and rants!

I realized some things about my proposed Lenten experience. 1) I would need to let some others at my church know what I’m doing in case some questions arose about my work ethic. 2) I would need to have email for my graduate school in order to turn in assignments. 3) There were certain bills that I needed to pay and some of that correspondence was through email

One of my mentors challenged me to think about no web activity. Well due to my need to pay bills online and graduate school that was not something I could do this year. It did make me think of the rationale for my giving up email. The rationale was to engage in more verbal communication rather than hiding behind electronic means. I was a blogger, facebooker, and texter as well as an emailer. I decided that to push myself to more verbal communication I would need to not only give up email, but texting, facebook, and blogging as well.

After considering these options I discussed it with my wife and we had a great conversation, mostly about how I was easily neglecting her through spending “our” time accessing facebook. I was convicted and made it my mission to give all of these up.

The Sunday leading up to Ash Wednesday I was trying to talk myself out of this lenten idea and doing my usual and give up Dr. Pepper, but then…

(to be continued)

-Mercer

The thought of giving up email for lent hit me in November of last year. I had hit a wall with facebook where I couldn’t pull myself away and felt distant from my family. Leah was constantly encouraging me to put down my iphone to engage with her. I’m not sure how those conversations morphed into giving up email, but I remember using my solitude time to reflect on what life would be like with using email.

I wanted to give it up right then, but knew that Lent was a good time because many Christians around the world would be challenged to sacrifice. Since it was heavy on my heart at the time, I chose to begin then in prayer and meditation for whether this was the right thing to do or not. At this point I was only considering email.

I had read an article in Oprah’s Magazine (lame I know), but it was on this very topic. A professional business woman discontinued her use of email for 30 days The article is at http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200803_omag_email

I had read this article just months previously and wondered if I would receive the same enlightenment.

Needless to say that my mind was made up in November that when Ash Wednesday rolled around in February I would sacrifice email.

So for the next few months I prayed and meditated and struggled with this decision.

(to be continued…)

I am back to the world of communication. I was off of email, blogs, facebook, and texting for the season of Lent. I have come to the conclusion that technology is good and necessary within our society, yet eroding our understanding of the importance of verbal and face to face interaction. So I have decided to be a blogging contradiction and use my blog these next few weeks to share my experience of 40 plus days without these things and other conclusions and implications.

-Mercer