Finding Holy in the Suburbs by Ashley Hales

Hales may have a distinct idea of what "suburbs" look like, but I think her observations and challenges apply to anyone in any area who is tempted to find personal safety, security, and satisfaction as their highest good, being surrounded by a culture that teaches this. And I would argue that's most of us in this cultural moment. She does speak uniquely into the the issues facing the demographic who is isolated or just closed off from the needs of others or who is tempted to idolize house, home, and family. I love that Hales first reminds us of God's greater story, and that our ultimate good is in seeking him. Having this perspective, many of our outward actions look the same, but this orientation leads to true contentment and belonging, and does lead to a life of true sacrifice that looks different than what the world is selling. Lots to think on and apply here. 

"When we try to find ourselves in a product only available to a select few, we miss out on finding both the kingdom of God and ourselves. Ultimately, because a house remains imminently 'chase-able,' as the chief object of our desires, we equate rootedness, safety, and shelter with an object that money can buy. We answer our hunger for home and belonging with a house.... Houses are more than mere objects, more than status symbols, more than indicators of wealth and privilege. We hope, of course, to find home in them. But we also hope to find ourselves. The sovereign self is inextricably linked to the house... In our homes we choose... Our practices of home and the stuff of home illustrate what we value. For most of us in the suburbs, we ultimately value ourselves."

"As we walk this line of detaching ourselves from the shiny objects we pursue for belonging and run to the Man of Sorrows, we will find contentment. There alone is belonging, no matter your circumstances. The good life is only in the suburbs to the extent that you, in the suburbs, are in God. God is our promised land, our ultimate home."

"Staying put is not based on permanence, it is a call of presence."

"We functionally trust in our wealth, not Jesus to save us."

She mentions a quote from this article where Stern describes the research that being exposed to those in need makes us more generous, amid findings that the wealthiest among us are statistically likely to give away the least, and it's not likely to be to an organization that helps the poor.  

"Also, as an offering to your suburb, you will have to die. Your dreams of the good life will have to be swallowed up into the sweeter story of the gospel, whose narrative arc never has us at its center, but God alone. Every other thing and idea you serve in the suburbs, safety, success, self-provision, self-actualization, productivity, will put you on a treadmill that never ends. There will always be safer fences for you to erect, to protect you and yours, physically and emotionally."

"We embrace sacrifice as the good life" with Jesus as our example. 

"Flourishing is only found on the other side of sacrifice."

"My tears are not a liability."

"Placement alone never makes us holy. You glorify God by being a faithful member of your suburb."

Boundaries for Your Soul by Allison Cook and Kimberly Miller

"In Celebration of Discipline Richard Foster observed, 'By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they only get us to the place where something can be done. They are the means by which we place ourselves where God can bless us.' Our religious activities, or spiritual disciplines, on their own don't change us, they create an environment in which growth can occur."

 "Whether of not you realize the full potential of this relationship vision depends not on your ability to attract the perfect mate, but on your willingness to acquire knowledge about hidden parts of yourself" --Harville Hendricks, Getting the Love You Want

I am still relatively new to this Internal Family Systems framework, but I see it as quite helpful. Cook and Miller give us a helpful process of identifying the different "parts" of our internal worlds, seeing what those internal conflicts are really about, and experiencing growth and healing. I'm still a bit hesitant about talking to the different parts of myself as if they are distinct persons, but I get the point they are trying to make and it is helpful. I am so aware of the need to approach the "inviting Jesus to be near" portion with discernment and care; flawed theology here is likely to leave to further wounding and also ruptures of faith. I so long to develop my "baptized imagination," but the language of metaphor and image is so much more helpful than the yes-no, right-wrong thinking that comes naturally to me. Overall, a helpful work. I plan to practice much of what I heard here. 

The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu

"We have already remarked how who we are can be defined, at least in part, by what we attend to - how much more so this is when what we attend to is determined less by our volition and more by ambiance. When we speak of living environments and their effects on us, then, we're often speaking too broadly of our city, the countryside, and so on. Our most immediate environment is actually formed by what holds our attention from moment to moment, having received or taken it. As William James once put it, 'My experience is what I agree to attend to.'"

Quoting a journalist in London from the US during WW2: "The journalistic approach, while objective, is not neutral." 

"Video games also consumed something else, human attention, in a way that was both old and new at the same time. As in any real game--be it tennis, pinball, or blackjack--the fast-flowing stimuli constantly engage the visual cortex, which reacts automatically to movement. No intentional focus is required, which explains why children and adults with Attention Deficit Disorder find the action of video games as engrossing as anyone else." Hm, interesting.

"In retrospect, the word 'remote control' was ultimately a misnomer. What it finally did was to empower the more impulsive circuits of the brain in their conflict with executive faculties, the parts with which we think we control ourselves and act rationally. It did this by making it almost effortless, practically nonvolitional, to redirect our attention--the brain had only to send one simple command to the finger in response to a cascade of involuntary cues. In fact, in the course of sustained channel surfing, the voluntary aspect of attention control may disappear entirely. The channel surfer is then in a mental state not unlike that of a newborn or a reptile. Having thus surrendered, the mind is simply jumping about and following whatever grabs it.

"All this leads ot a highly counterintuitive point: technologies designed to increase our control over our attention will sometimes have the very opposite effect. They open us up to a stream of instinctive selections, and tiny reward,s the sum of which may be no reward at all. And despite the complaints of the advertising industry, a state of distracted wandering is not really a bad one for attention merchants; it was far better than being ignored."

"Perhaps a century of the ascendant self of the self's progressive liberation from any trammels not explicitly conceived to protect other selves, perhaps this progression, then wedded to the magic of technology serving not the state or even the corporation but the individual ego, perhaps it could reach no other logical endpoint, but the self as its own object of worship.

"Of course, it is easy to denigrate as vanity even harmless forms of self-expression. Indulging in a bit of self-centeredness from time to time, playing with the trappings of fame, can be a form of entertainment for oneself and one's friends, especially when undertaken with a sense of irony. Certainly, too, the self-portrait, and the even more patently ludicrous invention, the selfie stick, has become too easy a target for charges of self-involvement. Humans, after all, have sought the admiration of others in various ways since the dawn of time; it is a feature of our social and sexual natures. The desire of men and women to dress up and parade may be as deeply rooted as the peacock's impulse to strut. Like all attention harvesters, INstagram has not stirred a new yearning within us, merely acted upon one already there, and facilitated its gratification to an unimaginable extent. Therein lies the real problem.

"Technology doesn't follow culture so much as culture follows technology. New forms of expression naturally arise from new media, but so do new sensibilities and new behaviors." 

Tim Wu has undertaken a sweeping history of the harvesting and selling of attention for profit, from the earliest advertisements for snake oil, to the enveloping of behavior psychology's insights in marketing, to now big tech and social media simultaneously holding and fragmenting our attention. All along the way, we see that, as Wu says, "Technology doesn't follow culture so much as culture follows technology." I found it haunting.