Fourth Sunday in Greentime
The M-Syndrome (Part Three)
This weekend, we continue our analysis of Collective Attention Deficit Disorder (aka CADD or the M-Syndrome). CADD might be symptomatic of a culture that is oriented to the “modular”, assigning specific tasks to a specific timeslot or cubbyhole. Neural grooves, generated by repetition, prompt us to think that life and life’s challenges are to be looked at in timeslots of 30 or 60 minutes, just like our favorite shows.
Religion, for example, which is supposed to be an integrating process, viz., tying up the various aspects of one’s life in a coherent package, frequently gets relegated by frenetic, overextended people to a time slot of 60 minutes on a weekend. (Less than 60 minutes becomes a “New York hour” and that works for many as well with Transcendence on a Sunday morning. To remind people that God is always with us and we are always with God, we encourage people to pray 35 times a week in addition to Sunday. Each morning, we should literally kneel bedside and thank God for the gift of the day ahead. Nobody, young or old, has a claim on the new day. Each evening, we should again kneel bedside and thank God for the gift of the day gone by, in gratitude for the blessings of family and friends that we have shared. We should thank God three times a day for the gift of the bountiful table that most of us have. We should ask God to show how to inspire our children to use their time and talent to share God’s gifts which others less fortunate than they. (As part of this, since St Patrick’s is a Pax Christi parish, we should say the Prayer of St Francis five times a day.
If, indeed, CADD (the M-Syndrome) exists, one can see, indeed, how pervasive and how subtle it is. What do you think? 012807AD jfq
