Priorities and Presence

There are three great loves in my life:

• My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
• My Wife and Children.
• The Church and its Mission.

There are three small loves in my life:

• Music (writing, performing, listening)
• The great outdoors (hunting, fishing, hiking, camping)
• Technology (I really am a geek, cleverly disguised)

Often such ideals are expressed in terms of priority, in the form of a bulleted list with the most important residing precariously at the top. I have found that while there are things that are more important than others, they are not expressed in real life scenarios in bullet form. Often the less important and the more important are next-door neighbors, and often roommates. They all occupy the same space and time. In fact space and time are what make them important. While it is true that I love my family more than I love music, I can easily spend more time on an average day listening to music in the car, in my office, on my ipod, than I do with my family. Does that automatically require that it move up the bulleted list of values in my life? I believe this to not be the case. While one cannot dismiss the quantity of time spent on something as an indicator of importance, it is not the only indicator. One indicator that I believe is crucial to declaring value, and priority is presence. We all can make a list of events that we attended that we were not present at. Whether it was a Sunday morning church service that we spent most of checking the scores of the game on our phone, a meeting where the most of our mental energy went into something taking place elsewhere, or a family dinner that we were disengaged from because of some distraction. I believe that the more we multi-task during a given event, meeting, or relationship, the message that we proclaim is that it may be important, but there are many other things that are just as important right now, so I will share this time with them. Back to the music and family analogy—I may listen to music while I am responding to emails or making phone calls, but in our house we do not typically listen to music during dinner. For me it is not a mood setter, but an attention getter. I do not have the capacity to allow music to be white noise. I will feel the need to analyze lyrics, musical features, and it will be splitting my attention from my family. I try and practice the discipline of presence to show my family and my self that this is a priority moment.

Recently I had a moment of epiphany regarding this idea of presence. As a lover of technology, my phone is one of the interfaces with technology that is important to me. I can check sports scores, send and receive text messages, emails, phone calls, browse the news, watch videos. It is simply amazing what can be accomplished on a phone today! However, all of these tasks and conveniences come at a price. That price is often seen in presence. How many times have we allowed an important conversation to be interrupted by an incoming call, or text? How many times have we allowed our attention to stray from the moment, to somewhere else because we were reading an email. The prophet Isaiah describes people who “have eyes but are blind,” and “have ears but are deaf.” I believe that by denying our presence to a given moment we are denying the ability of our eyes to see and our ears to hear. God gave me this thought,

“what if the things that I am listening to are keeping me from hearing the things that I really need to? What if the things that are occupying my time are not the most important things?”

I was convicted by this thought, and I resolved that I would make efforts to be present, especially when it came to the big 3 in my life. I made the decision that for a given period of time I would only carry my cell phone during business hours. When I arrived at home I put my phone away. If someone called during that time, they could leave me a voicemail. If they texted me, I would text them back tomorrow. If they emailed me, I would delete it tomorrow (after I replied of course)! I found this to be a freeing exercise. I was no longer being pulled in several directions at one time, but free to be present in the moment that I chose. Since that time, I have resumed carrying my phone with me, but I no longer feel the need to look at who is calling every time it rings, or to answer every email or text immediately. In my opinion, the more instant a communication is does not render it more efficient, simply more convenient. We should never confuse convenience with efficacy.

I think there is an important distinction to make here. I am not saying that in order to communicate priority and presence your environment must be completely clear of any form of distraction. What is required even more is a focus, or mental clarity in any given scenario. The environments that you are able actually control are likely to be non-existent, which would require more of a mental and relational discipline rather than a physical one. However the physical manifestation of such discipline can be the gateway and even catalyst to the mental and relational practice of it. This is what was demonstrated in my phone fast. The initial physical act of placing my phone away, lead me to an adoption of that discipline in a mental and relational form. Now I can carry my phone in my pocket and still maintain mental focus and presence in spite of it. My ability to be in the present is not dictated by the distractions.

So the theory is, the things with a higher level of importance are treated with a greater degree of presence. More presence, more importance.

What are they ways that I elevate the important things in my day?

What are the things that are the primary usurpers of my presence?

Do the things that I give more presence to result in a greater outcome than those that receive less presence?

Does it irritate me when others are not present in a moment that is important to me?

In addition to these thoughts:

Should the church be added into the list of great loves of my life? I mean, as a believer have I ever been commended in the Scriptures to love the church? I know that the Scriptures give the command to love the Lord, love the people around me, and to love my wife (in the same way that CHRIST loved the church). Should I demote the church to one of the lesser loves in my life?