Today’s find: Hard copy

Our burg’s city park was the place to be on Saturday morning, judging by the line of cars in queue for the quarterly “electronics recycling event.”

I arrived relatively early-on, but still found myself behind two or three dozen other local citizens in their sedans – all awaiting our turn to become dispossessed of devices that had outlived their usefulness.

Waiting in line…to off-load our stuff…

In my case, it was the Canon PC 795 that had given up the ghost – a compact (and delightfully useful) copier that had been serving my little business and home office for at least 20 years, maybe longer.

I guess that brands me as Old School: Someone who actually prefers hard-copy to digital-squiggles-on-a-screen. That said, I might argue there’s a tad more hope (perhaps even confidence) in the heart of one who chooses to distribute words-on-paper rather than flinging them willy-nilly into the web-o-sphere. Whenever I used my Canon to make copies through the years, I almost always had a specific target audience in mind – someone, or someones, who’d soon be holding the sheet and reading the words that I’d taken the trouble to set down.

Is that intent in any way distinct from the current obsession with obtaining digital “clicks”?

Why, yes…I think it is.

There’s a certain permanence, a certain leisureliness, to the type of engagement I’m talking about. You’re not looking for “eyeballs” but for “brain cells”. The goal is to encourage not “scrolling” but “immersion” and “reflection”.

This is a spiritual discipline, of course. And the temptation to rush-right-past things of value is as old as time. Jesus cautions us along these lines in the parable of the sower we hear this week. He notes how sometimes seed is “sown on rocky ground” where it fails to set down roots…or sown among thistles and thorns where “worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word [so that] it bears no fruit.”

Seven hundred years before Jesus walked the earth, the prophet Isaiah used similar imagery to move our hearts toward a reflective stillness:

Thus says the LORD: Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.

Indeed: It’s a marvelous grace to perceive (even for a moment) how the Author of nature’s cycles works on the grandest of scales, well beyond what our fretful souls often can tolerate. And yet, the Holy One continues to invite us in and take a peek: “Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46)

Now if I hadn’t just recycled my Canon PC 795, I might say “copy that.”

There’s something to be said for hard copies…

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS