Saint Andrew Church

Jesus in Slo-mo

Two innovations of technology that have made watching TV more interesting are the instant replay and slow motion (slo-mo) videography. Of course these are most applicable in situations were the incident being replayed has consequences affecting the outcome of the event. You rarely (if ever) see slo-mo used during daytime soap operas: soap operas seem to some people to be TV life played in slo-mo already. Characters being portrayed on the soap opera may be out of bounds, but it seems more interesting to most viewers when the show is a football game and the character is a running back than if the character is a drop-dead gorgeous soap-opera-secretary. Football plays happen so quickly that slowing the play down enables the viewer to feel closer to the action as if they are one of the referees. The viewer is more engaged in the game as a result, and advertisers of the game are willing to pay enormous fees for the right to advertize to fully engaged viewers.

Imagine soap operas being broadcast in slow motion. Viewers would likely tune out because the pace of character revelation would be excruciatingly slow. Unless you are a viewer who enjoys absorbing rich character-revelation plots, you probably would prefer watching a story in which the characters are revealed at a pace that seems like real-time or faster. Movies have been described as life with the boring parts cut out.

We live currently in an over-stimulating environment. The environment surrounding you at restaurants for example is deliberately stimulating; sometimes, as with sports bars, the effect is created using banks of televisions that completely surround and over-stimulate the patrons. We have come to expect this stimulation and its absence can make us anxious.

Awareness of other realities kept submerged by the tide of superficial stimulation begins to appear on our mental radar. At times these ideas are disturbing as the pseudo-security flowing from our choices of stimulation give way to deeper, foundational realities like our relationships and the responsibilities that flow from them.

Prayer in this environment can seem like a painfully-slow-motion-conversation with God. Revelation, the disclosure or unveiling of the Other with whom we are in relationship, is not solely dependent upon me. How often have you heard someone make the observation “It’s all about you”? The meaning of the observation is that the self-absorbed person is running rough shod over the relationship as if the direction of the revelation is one-way and determined by only one person. It damages or corrupts the relationship with the other by being impatient and controlling (manipulative) of the other. In our spiritual life, this is evidence of secularization that damages society as our sense of God’s presence and all it makes possible is obscured and made very hard to feel.

Maybe the Father wants the normal experience of prayer to feel like “Jesus in slo-mo.” We are already living life so quickly that slowing the pace a bit enables us to feel closer to the action as if we are one of the actors in salvation history. Like the viewer mentioned at the beginning of this article, we feel more engaged in the making of the history as a result, and the sponsor of the event, Jesus was willing to pay an enormous fee for the right to advertize and keep us fully, eternally engaged.

Fr. Dan

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