Chapel – Christina Crook
Well, good morning, everyone. It is a joy to be here. How is it, it's difficult to not feel joy in such an incredibly beautiful space. I was learning this morning that all of the tiles behind us were hand, were painstakingly hand placed. And if you get really close, they're incredibly tiny. What a joyful and beautiful space to be in. It is my privilege to be with the Tyndale community, it's actually not my first time, your Provost and Chief Academic Officer Beth, Dr. Beth Green is a close friend of mine. And I've had the privilege of speaking to the Tyndale faculty in the past, remotely. And so it is a joy to be embodied in real time and space, with you here, today.
What brings you joy? I've asked 1000s of people this question, and they say things like, a fresh page in my notebook. Who here had the joy of getting new school supplies this semester? Come on, you know, yes, yes, yes. So the crack, right, the crack of the spine opening up, you know, a book for the very first time or a new journal or a favourite pen, right? It's a joyful experience. People will say my cat or my dog, right, pets are a joyful, treasured, possession or it's a relationship right? In our house, we've got, with my husband and our three kids, we've got two. They're just a little bit beyond kitten age at this point. But Benedict and Calvin, some good theological names there. They love to play together, sleep together. And they bring us great joy. Right pets. People will say things like visiting my parents or my friends each week, a smile from a loved one. I want you to stop for a second and actually just close your eyes for a moment. And I'd like you to think, and answer, what is one simple thing that brings me joy. And just sit with that thing. Maybe it's a person, or a place, or a pastime? What brings you joy? You could open your eyes. When I hear answers to this question, I'm always amazed by the commonalities, and maybe as you were hearing the examples I gave, and as you were thinking of your thing, just now, you're noticing some commonalities. So a lot of our joys are connected to relationship, or to nature, to place, or to a pastime, right, that brings you alive? Well, why am I beginning with this talk, ostensibly about technology. That is my area of expertise, I'm considered a "Digital Well, being expert". It's a quite an unusual career.
Well, we can't have a conversation about the joy of missing out, without an understanding of what I mean when I say the word, "Joy". And so I'd like to start by looking at the dictionary definition. And I'll admit that it was actually a couple of years after the publish, my, after "The Joy of Missing Out", my first book was published. And I'd given hundreds of interviews about this topic around technology and relationships with joy before actually went to the dictionary definition of the word. And there I found some interesting things.
Joy, the emotion evoked by well being, success, or good fortune, or by the prospect of possessing what one desires, the expression or exhibition of such emotion, gaiety or bliss, a source or cause of delight.
When I finally did look at the definition, I was amazed to see those two words written right into the definition, well being and success, the things that everybody wants. And I know in the Christian context, context, success can seem like a dirty word, right? Climbing that corporate ladder, trying to raise, you know, raise ourselves up and push others down. But I define well being is having a positive relationship with your abilities, and your limits, and success simply as the achievement of your goals, whatever they are. And what I love about these definitions is that they're internally motivated, not externally motivated, and that's the problem with FOMO. Right? Who here knows what FOMO is? Put your hand up. Okay, call it out. What is it? Fear Of Missing Out? What are the core messages of FOMO? Well, I kind of narrowed them down to three core voices we hear on a daily basis. You're not doing enough. You don't have enough. You are not enough. When we define and through Christ, we define success on our own terms, right? We can stand in confidence and joy. in that definition. We experienced joy when well being and success exist simultaneously within us.
Well, what does the Bible and other biblical thinkers have to say about this tiny, beautiful word? We're gonna pull up the quotes now. There we go. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness." Galatians 5:22. Henry Nouwen says, "Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy, and keep choosing it every day." "The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant giving light to the eyes." Psalm 19. I love this one. "Every real thing is a joy." And isn't it true that we don't know in this age, what is real, right? This is like the age this is the age of AI, right? It's so difficult to know what is real. But God is the really real. "Every real thing is a joy. If only if only you have eyes and ears to relish it, a nose and a tongue to taste it." And finally, this last one, which we're going to land on, "Postpone joy, it will diminish. Postpone a problem. It will grow."
What is joy, and why does it matter? What does Joy have to do with the learning right here we are in an academic institution, teaching and technology? Well, here's why I believe Joy matters when it comes to our relationship with the online world. The path of joy is not effortless. It's effort full. It's not mindless, it's mindful. It requires courage and curiosity and openness to wonder. There's are the qualities of a good learner right? To be curious, to seek after a knowledge and an understanding. The things that bring the most joy to our lives involve active noticing and nurturing. Two things, two qualities, two active postures, our online lives often do not demand of us. Noticing is about your attention, right, we talked about we're in the attention economy. Noticing is about your attention. And nurturing is about your effort. Over the past 10 years since the advent, and actually even longer than that now, since the advent of the smartphone and social media, but especially over the last three years, through this period of incredible social isolation, particularly here in Toronto with all of the lock downs. We've been on a steady march towards a digital first future. But my question is, has it brought us joy? How joyful Are you feeling this morning? How joyful are your friends? How joyful are your classmates or your students? How joyful is your community? Remember what Paulo Coelho said "Postpone joy, it will diminish. Postpone a problem, it will grow."
When you think about the digital true tools you use on a daily basis, the apps and platforms that you engage with, probably minute by minute, hour after hour, which of those increase your joy, and which of them diminish it. My journey into this work of researching the connection between technology, relationships and joy began with my own growing discomfort with the role technology was playing in my own life. I studied at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, if I have a West Coast vibe, that's why it's where I'm from. And there I studied mass communication, and like all good studies at Simon Fraser, there was a very liberal arts education and really we were looking at Media and the ways in which it shaped both individuals and the culture at large. And so when I began my career at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and more and more of our work was becoming digital, social media was coming on the scene, I was very keyed into the ways in which it was shifting my life, the lives of my peers, and also the culture at large.
A couple of years later, I moved with my small family, from a small island in British Columbia to this epicentre, the centre of Canada, Toronto, and in one fell swoop, all of my relationships were all of a sudden mediated in some way, through technology. Right, I had one friend in Toronto, but I didn't know my neighbours. None of my family was here, no close friends. And what I began to discover was, I started to not put, I stopped putting in the work of connecting directly with family and friends. Maybe you can relate to this. So developing a sort of a voyeuristic approach to checking in with people online, trying to cobble together a story of what their lives are telling, right with the photos and posts they put out there. I remember very distinctly this one conversation I had with my mom, I have a lot of brothers. And one particular brother, I'd been you know, sort of checking in on at that point was like Facebook was the big thing, right? So that's dating me, but that's true. Kind of like, you know, been just checking out creeping on his Facebook post. I was like, he's killing it like, aren't there? They're doing so well. Da da da and my mom, I remember my mom sort of like was like, no, they're not. And that's when it sort of dawned on me. Right, the pictures are pretty. But the struggle is real for all of us. And so I had a curiosity about what would happen if I completely disconnected from the internet. Originally, I wanted to do it for an entire year. My family back home was like, "There's no way you're not allowed. We want photos of grandchildren, we want, you know, you're basically going to disappear." I remember one mentor of mine told me that if I completely ditched the internet, it would be like I didn't exist. And she would see me on the other side. It's like well, surprising, but this did happen.
But I did. I completely disconnected from the internet for 31 days, takes a lot of planning. You have to get a map book. You've got to write down phone numbers you use on a regular basis that you usually Google, you know, over and over and over again. But I did, and what I discovered during that digital detox, after the first couple of days of the inevitable detoxing, nervous twitches, reaching for my phone and not having any data, was a quietness of mind. It was like all of the online chatter, that I was saturated in, just fell away. I hope that sounds like good news to you. It was good news for me. I had a quietness of mind, just a peace of mind. I was more creative.
What I realized was all of those little five minute, and 10 minute, and 20 minute check ins I made on my phone actually adds up to a huge amount of time. And I was essentially banking it and reclaiming it, to do the things I always said I wanted to do but didn't have time for, like write poetry, or call my grandma. And it brought me connection, very local connection. Because when I wanted to find out the best pizza place in the neighbourhood, because I was still pretty new to the neighbourhood. I couldn't just Google and look for a Yelp review. I had to ask someone on my street or when I locked myself out of my house, I literally had to look for a car and a driveway and go knocking on doors until I found someone who could help me because again, couldn't access the internet.
Our needs, right, they bring us into relationship with others. The fasting bore fruit. In the New York Times a couple of years ago, Maria de Lourdes Ruiz Scaperlanda wrote about the season of Lent. She said quote, "The question for me is not whether there's a point to giving things up during Lent, but whether I should ever stop fasting from all that numbs, dulls and deadens me to life all of life as it is today. The good and the bad. Fasting, makes me willing to try." There's another quote I love from the Catholic novelist, Flannery O'Connor, when she says "You have to push back as hard against the age that pushes you."
With some exceptions, our websites and apps do not encourage reflection. Instead, they urge us to consume, right, more information, more connections, more goods. Screen time, when used at length mindlessly, falls firmly for most of us in the life taking column. But the truth is, and we know this in this room, consumption is not our great and final goal. We were made for more. And a very practical, contemplative practice can help us get there. Who here has heard of the Examen before? All right, a couple of hands. The Examen, developed by St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, is a daily practice of spiritual reflection intended to help a person become aware of the, aware of the presence of God in their life. Now, I, it's a pleasure to speak to a Christian audience, because I actually spend the vast majority of my time not speaking to Christians. And so I have actually mastered the language around teaching the Examen to people that are not of the same faith. And so if you say it's a Christian practice, you get sort of like people's body or spirit, and I think they're, you know, they kind of recoil a little bit, I'll be honest, but if you call it an "age old contemplative practice", they're into it. So I'm going to teach you an age old contemplative practice. It's a very simplified version I like to teach, which is spending five minutes at the each, end of each day, just before you're getting into bed, and asking yourself, what today was most life giving? And what today was most life taking?
So maybe today, the most life giving thing, we're at the beg, you're kind of at the beginning of your day. So you're, this is like a little cheat, because you're thinking about it today, I hope. But let's say you get to the end of today, and the most life giving thing was, you decided to go outside, because it's still really beautiful fall weather, and throw a football around with a couple of new friends. And your most life taking thing was scrolling Tik Tok for maybe two more hours than you had intended to. What I love about this practice is none of us have margin, right? That's the problem with digital overwhelm, and all the overwhelm so many of us feel on a daily basis. Through this practice, we begin to, unconsciously, choose to do more of the life giving things. It creates an orientation towards joy. My encouragement to you today is to embrace the joy of missing out on the right things. Life taking things like digital distraction, and the constant pull of convenience and comfort and control. Those are the three false promises of big technology, that they will bring us to joy, but the truth is they don't. Trade them. Let God cultivate in you a hunger for the life giving. Through the practice of the Examen, pursue your joys, the people, places and pastimes that make you come alive. It's what you're made for. Let us pray.
Lord of the life giving, the true, the good, and the beautiful. I pray that you ignite in each soul and each heart here, a desire, a hunger for joy, for the life giving. Because we know that our delights are a guide to your path for us. Let us be the ones who build communities who know each other's names, who spend our time well, who live every hour of every day. Let us be the ones who love ourselves, who embrace our strengths and weaknesses alike. Let us be the ones who are grateful for what we have. Who waste no thought on what we don't need. Let us be the ones who embrace our humanity, who would rather feel pain than feel nothing. God make us ones who know true riches, who value human connection above all. Make us courageous. Let us be the ones who choose adventure over regret. Make us generous. Let us be the ones who give our loved ones our whole hearts and attention. Jesus, let us be the ones who have joy, that choose love over fear. Amen.
