Whe Innocent Diversion is not so Innocent

I

Does the cell phone bring us closer to God or not? How about sports or movies or music or TV? All these recreational endeavors are innocent activities. How we use them is often another matter altogether. The smart phone and all its related enrichments lead the way. Any idle moment often is filled with the thumbs moving or the machine up to the ear. When we get in the car, the radio or music go on. In the house, it is the TV or the songs of our choice that immediately attack the silence.

Thomas Merton described this situation decades before the first cellular came into existence. He called it “the tyranny of diversion.” Diversion is any systematic and planned distraction that facilitates staying on the shallow level twenty four hours a day. Diversions are inconsequential activities that block serious human engagement with reality. Diversion involves frivolous activities that draw us away from our humanity. Illusion, fiction, stupor and apathy are some words that aptly describe the consequences of diversion.

The consumer culture has a strong pull for all of us to live at a superficial level. Any effort at deeper at reflection is a challenge to that ever-present urge to stay occupied. This is what Merton means by “tyranny of diversion.” 

II

For Teresa of Avila true spirituality is rooted in our full response to reality. It is a call to get real. This means to face life in all its dimensions: good and bad, arbitrary and rational, organized and chaotic. True spirituality deals with life both as an experience that is organized and rational but often flows into confusion or irrationality and random futility. This disorder and turmoil is an essential part of everybody’s experience. Jesus describes it as the weeds and the wheat. He lived this mixed existence on the journey to Jerusalem. He resolved it in the death on the cross and resurrection.

The journey into prayer exposes the shallowness of the consumer approach to reality that highlights diversion. It projects a reality that safeguards more consumption. Diversion is supportive of this approach to reality that always seeks to lead to more consumption no matter how superficial it may be. Diversion is a means to avoid disharmony and insulate life from the troublesome and burdensome elements of human existence.

Teresa, on the other hand, presents prayer as a challenge to face life in all its absurdities and contradictions. Eventually, faithfulness to prayer will lead to the resolution of these paradoxes along with the ability to make sense out of reality. It is the acceptance of the weeds and the wheat leading to a final resolution in God. This is the road to Jerusalem where the Cross gathers all the deceptions and illusions and ever-present dimension of evil in life to move through death into life in its fullness.
On this journey, silence and solitude are a non-negotiable part of true prayer. “The tyranny of diversion” is no casual obstacle. The withdrawal into silence and solitude is essential to our encounter with God in prayer. Merton puts it this way. Those who cannot be close with themselves in periodic and growing silence and solitude cannot find their true being. They are locked into the superficiality of constant diversion.

We need to be careful and vigilant less we surrender to a life that is divided and fragmented. This dissipated approach pulls us this way and that way with conflicting plans and projects. When this happens, we find ourselves often doing things we do not really want to do, saying things we do not mean and going places we do not intend to go. Merton is right on target in describing diversion as “tyranny.” The exaggerated and singular pursuit of diversion deprives us of the freedom to be our real selves.

III

The many occasions of diversion are not a neutral event in the life of a serious Christian. The multiple activities as a whole and the individual events of diversion either bring us closer to God or they do not. This is often why we have a strong tendency to avoid silence and solitude. God has a way of filling the apparent emptiness of silence and solitude with the call for more. God surfaces the barriers in our life that are keeping us from God. Eventually we will have to measure all our activities by a single rule. The actions of our life either bring us closer to God or they do not. This always demands change because on the journey to God our innocent diversions often lose their innocence. They often become cravings of a fragmented heart. They rob us of our freedom. The individual thing, activity or relationship is not bad in itself. The trouble is within our heart that distorts them and makes them idols hindering our pursuit of God.

Merton’s thoughts on silence are helpful at this point.

“Not only does silence give us a chance to understand ourselves better, to get a truer and more balanced perspective on our own lives in relation to the lives of others: silence makes us whole if we let it. Silence helps to draw together the scattered and dissipated energies of a fragmented existence. It helps us to concentrate on a purpose that really corresponds not only to the deeper needs of our own being but also to God’s intentions for us.”

God is always beckoning us. Often, silence and solitude, no matter how apparently inconsequential, facilitate the call. Silence is the language of God. All of our possessions, activities and relationships sooner or later need to be questioned. Do they free us for our God-search or do they block the road? Are they innocent and joyful or are they a burden and drain of our freedom stopping our journey?
The road to freedom is a long and arduous passage. We can only move ahead one step at a time. God is patient with us but gentle in the insistence to let go and let God. Silence and solitude are a critical part of this process. Diversion is also. It is the balance of the two that we will find in deep, personal prayer.