Introverts in the Church by Adam S McHugh

I started reading this, inwardly shouting "Yes, yes, yes!" I read this particular passage to my husband, and he just said, "YES!"
"Whereas in some church traditions you enter a sanctuary in a spirit of quiet reverence, in evangelical churches you walk into what feels like a nonalcoholic cocktail party. There is a chatty, mingling informality to evangelicalism, where words flow like wine. To participate in the evangelical church is to join the conversation. Introverts, however, spare our words in unfamiliar contexts and often prefer to observe on the fringe rather than engage in the center. Our spirituality may be grounded in Scripture, yet is quieter, slower, and more contemplative. In an upfront, talkative, active evangelical culture, we can be viewed as self-absorbed or standoffish, and we can fell like outsiders even when we have faithfully attended a church for years." (21)
*note: "we" is introverts... see entry on Quiet.

"While extroverts commonly feel loneliness when others are absent, introverts can feel most lonely when others are present, because ours is the aching loneliness of not being known or understood" (50).

"Herein lies the deep irony in a Christian view of healing for introverts: as followers of Jesus, even introverted ones, our ultimate identity is never found in aloneness, but it is found in relationship to another.... We define ourselves in relationship to Christ: who we are is how we relate to him" (56).

"...the introverted trajectory of growth is toward relationships with others and relationship with the outside world. The love that is the ultimate goal of the Christian life cannot be restricted to inner stirrings, but it must be expressed in self-sacrificial action.....In the process, we are not aiming to become extroverts; we still firmly remain introverts and have a preference toward solitude. Our goal, rather, is to stretch our personality preferences without distorting them. We learn how to look outward but, at the same time, without losing our center" (59-60).

"As introverts who are followers of Jesus, we must remember that our introversion does not ultimately determine our thoughts and behaviors. Personality typing is a helpful way to understand ourselves and how to live authentically in the world, but it is not what centrally defines us. When we use our introversion as an excuse for not loving people sacrificially, we are not acting as introverts formed in the image of God. We who follow a crucified Messiah know that love will sometimes compel us to willingly choose things that make us uncomfortable, to surrender our rights for the blessing of others" (63).

"A proper understanding of christian spirituality will embrace the entire person, not simply the person's 'spirit.' If the preeminent commandment is that you should 'love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength' (Mark 12:30), then our theology and practice of spirituality must address each aspect of our humanness" (77).

When discussing sleep and that many introverts need more sleep than average, "It's important that we pay attention to the mundane as well as the sublime, as it's the mundane that makes the sublime possible" (79).

Introverts can be good leaders, but "we must distinguish between our energy level for a task and our gifting for that same task. Just because we lose energy doing something does not necessarily indicate we are not a good fit for it. I am convinced that calling, not personality type, is the determinative factor in the formation and longevity of a leader" (137).

How to thrive in ministry: self-care. "She finds it easier to connect with God through silence, art and ritual than through the chatty fellowship and unstructured worship of her church" (140-141).
"Our self-care must also move in an outward direction....Hart's observation that introspection without any other influence leads to distortion is especially penetrating for introverted leaders. Even though our internal process is incredibly valuable, there is clarity that comes from speaking out loud. God never intended for even the most introverted person to live life without reference to others. Isolation is never an indicator of spiritual health" (141). 

Alone Together

"Some robots are designed to deliver medication to the elderly, to help them reach for grocery items on high shelves, and to monitor their safety. A robot can detect if an elderly person is lying on the floor at home, a possible signal of distress. I take no exception with such machines. But... sociable robots are designed as companions. They force to ask why we don't, as the children put it, 'have people for these jobs.' Have we come to think of the elderly as nonpersons who do not require the care of persons? I find that people are most comfortable with the idea of giving caretaker robots to patient with Alzheimer's disease or dementia. Philosophers say that our capacity to put ourselves in the place of the other is essential to being human. Perhaps when people lose this ability, robots seem appropriate company because they share this incapacity...... When children ask, 'Don't we have people for those jobs?' they remind us that our allocation of resources is a social choice. Young children and the elderly are not a problem until we decide that we don't have the time or resources to attend to them" (108).

One argument used for robots, despite their not truly caring, is that "we take comfort in the presence of people whose true motivations we don't know. We assign caring roles to people who may not care at all" (133).

"the questions for the future are not whether children will love their robot companions more than their pets or even their parents. The questions are rather, 'What will love be? And what will it mean to achieve ever-greater intimacy with our machines? Are we ready to see ourselves in the mirror of the machine and to see love as our performance of love?' (138).

"Yet, even such simple pleasures bring compulsions that take me by surprise. I check my e-mail first thing in the morning and before going to bed at night. I have come to learn that informing myself about new professional problems and demands is not a good way to start or end my day, but my practice unhappily continues. I admitted my ongoing irritation with myself to a friend, a woman in her seventies who has meditated on a biblical reading every morning since she was in her teens. She confessed that it is ever more difficult to begin her spiritual exercises before she checks her e-mail; the discipline to defer opening her inbox is now part of her devotional gesture" (154).

"Online, like MIT's cyborgs, we feel enhanced; there is a parallel with the robotic movement of more. But in both cases, moments of more may leave us with lives of less" (154). 

She talks about Pete who has an "online wife." "Pete says that his online marriage is an essential part of his 'life mix.' I ask him about this expression. I have never heard it before. Pete explains that the life mix is the mash-up of what you have on- and offline. Now, we ask not of our satisfactions in life but in our life mix. We have moved from multitasking to multi-lifing" (160).

"In talking about sociable robots, I described an arc that went from seeing simulation as better than nothing to simply better, as offering companions that could meet one's exact emotional requirements. Something similar is happening online. We may begin thinking that e-mails, texts, and Facebook messaging are thin gruel but useful if the alternative is sparse communication with the people we care about. Then, we become accustomed to their special pleasures--we can have connection when and where we want or need it, and we can easily make it go away. In only a few more steps, you have people describing life on Facebook as better than anything they have ever known" (160).

"We are tempted, summoned by robots and bots, objects that address us as if they were people. And just as we imagine things as people, we invent ways of being with people that turn them into something close to things" (224).

"Our neurochemical response to every ping and ring tone seems to be the one elicited by the 'seeking' drive, a deep motivation of the human psyche. Connectivity becomes a craving; when we receive at ext or an e-mail, our nervous system responds by giving us a shot of dopamine. We are stimulated by connectivity itself. We learn to require it, even as it depletes us. A new generation suspects this is the case. I think of a sixteen-year-old girl who tells me, 'Technology is bad because people are not as strong as its pull'" (227).

"Those who turn to online confession sites suggest that it is to 'broaden our definition of community' to include these virtual places. But this strips language of its meaning. If we start tocall online spaces where we are with other people 'communities,' it is easy to forget what the word used to mean. From its derivation, it literally means 'to give among each other.' It is good to have this in mind as a stadard for online places. It think it would be fair to say that online confession sites fall below this mark" (238).

"The ties we form through the Internet are not, in the end, the ties that bind. But they are the ties that preoccupy. We text each other at family dinners, while we job, while we drive, as we push our children on swings in the park. We don't want to intrude on each other, so instead we constantly introde on each other, but not in 'real time'" (280).

"As I was working on the book, I discussed its themes with a former colleague, Richard, who has been left severely disabled by an automobile accident. He is now confined to a wheelchair in his home and needs nearly full-time nursing care. Richard is interested in robots being developed to provide practical help and companionship to people in his situation, but his reaction to the idea is complex. He begins by saying, 'Show me a person in my shoes who is looking for a robot, and I'll show you someone who is looking for a person and can't find one,' but then he makes the best possible case for robotic helpers when he turns the conversation to human cruelty" (281).

"Of course, it's tempting to talk about all this in terms of addiction...The addiction metaphor fits a common experience: the more time spent online, the more one wants to spend time online. But however apt the metaphor, we can ill afford the luxury of using it. Talking about addiction subverts our best thinking because it suggests that if there are problems, there is only one solution. To combat addiction, you have to discard the addicting substance. But we are not going to 'get rid' of the Internet. We will not go 'cold turkey' or forbid cell phones to our children. We are not going to stop the music or go back to television as the family hearth. I believe we will find new paths toward each other, but considering ourselves victims of a bad substance is not a good first step. The idea of addiction, with its one solution that we know we won't take, makes us feel hopeless. We have to find a way to live with seductive technology and make it work to our purposes. This is hard and will take work. Simple love of technology is not going to help. Nor is a Luddite impulse" (294).

The narrative of Alone Together describes an arc: we expect more from technology and less from each other. This puts us at the still center of a perfect storm" (295).

Now I want to read "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholas Carr
"Your Brain on Computers: Outdoor and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain" by Matt Richtel