Idleness, silos, anonymous comments and prayer. Plus the time when the Virgin Mary sought out a friend.
There are overlooked aspects of the effect isolation due to the pandemic has on us and without communal prayer, we must double our personal efforts to pray to God on our own.
The other day I was having trouble with a minor technical issue with my printer. I knew there would be someone on line who had a video with a fix.
Naturally I went to 'everyone's go to video source' on the internet to find a video that would demonstrate someone's recorded solution to this printer's problem.
To my surprise, for this particular issue there was just one video. I played it. The narrator had a very thick accent, actually barely a command of the English language.
For me, having grown up in a first-generation English language household, this is not an issue. For me It's generally just a matter of paying closer attention to the words being spoken and in this case, the technical aspect of the issue helped with my understanding.
The solution was fairly straight forward and I was able to make the adjustment on my printer. I went back to the video and thought I'd add a 'like' to the provider who spoke broken English for his solution.
I happened to scan one of the comments just before clicking off my computer.
To my surprise the comments, and there were a number of them were extremely crass and condescending even cruel.
The comments for the most part had nothing to do with the solution. They did not say things like, hey this didn't work (because the solution did work) nor did it say they had a better solution.
No instead the comments were solely about the persons English. And it's not as though the comments had a positive spin like, 'Hey next time check out the pronunciation of some of your wording' or 'Your solution was great, but your accent got in the way a bit."
No the comments were like, hey don't even try to do a video in English, another comment 'Your English Sucks, and so do you…and these don't include the comments with cursing.
It still makes me shake my head as I recall the experience.
I mean this was just a solution to setting up a printer. It was not discussing a societal issue nor the tumult of the Corona virus on society.
Yet the discord and judgements of those commentators, mostly anonymous, were extremely venomous and angry and unnecessary on such a simple printer related work around.
All this brings to light the notions that idleness, lack of social interaction and paying too close attention to one's personal communication medium is devolving us into silos of behavior unfitting for humanity and especially in this day and age.
As I mentioned last week, without the practice of communal praying to God, where you and your churchgoing peers do attempt to try to reset a weekly recommitment to live by the Golden Rules of honoring our Lord and treating others the same way as we wish them to treat us, is making the world a more challenging place to live day to day.
The longer this isolation drags on, the more it's important to seek time with God.
Idleness, the silos we are all finding ourselves in due to the pandemic fears and the inability to gather on Sunday's in church, is contributing to the unrest all across the world.
We can live better and make a better world out of this virus mess. We can grow stronger if we work together in not being so judgmental.
And as for finding a friendly, someone you can identify with?
In this episode we remember how the Virgin Mary found her solution when facing the uncertainty of her pregnancy.
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Constant Procession tells of key apparitions of the Virgin Mary since she passed on from the world and how she serves humanity through Christianity.
The origin of these podcasts began with my book The Constant Procession.
An e-book copy of the book can be found on my website:
Constant Procession (the podcast) is published every Tuesday morning and has links, photos, video and more information for each episode at ConstantProcession.com