22nd January, 2006

EAR, EAR, (EAR)!

I tend towards being a gadget person (I don’t want to say ‘freak’) myself, so I have some appreciation of those who seem to be addicted to them. You know the ones I mean – they have a perfectly working computer, or organizer, or phone, or whatever, but there’s a newer, more powerful model, and they have to have that. And if there aren’t at least a couple of gadgets within their reach they suffer withdrawal symptoms. And we wonder sometimes how much they really help. Take the guy I encountered during the week on the Metro.

In a way I felt a bit sorry for him – clearly his ideal solution would have been to have grown another ear. He was standing beside me in a fairly crowded carriage. He caught my attention principally because he was so well dressed, complete with an expensive-looking briefcase in one hand while he held on to the bar with the other – a picture of young, I’m-going-places elegance. The only aspect of the scene that was out of place was that, judging by the shapes he was making, it wasn’t Beethoven or Mozart he was listening to on his iPod.

His problem arose because in the midst of whatever ecstasy he was in his mobile went off. Carefully he let go of the bar, and retrieved the phone from his pocket. As he realised his situation the quizzical look on his face was comical. His ears were already full of earphones, clearly at a high volume, so holding the phone to one of them wasn’t going to be much help. The train was just pulling into a station, so putting his briefcase on the floor wasn’t an attractive, or maybe even possible, option. I was slightly tempted to stay on the train to see how he got on, but as usual I resisted temptation and went on my way. How he got on, I don’t know, but I presume he has answered it by now.

The simple incident, which occurred at the start of the week, came back to mind as I was looking over this Sunday’s gospel. And I thought, I do hope it wasn’t Jesus on the phone, because, unlike in the gospel, there wasn’t going to be an “at once” about the answer. And “at once” is the spectacular aspect of this Sunday’s readings. It’s implied in the people of Nineveh’s response to Jonah’s preaching. And it’s stated explicitly in the response of the apostles to Jesus’s call to follow Him.

It’s all so very different from St. Augustine’s prayer, “ O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet”, a prayer whose spirit we can all easily identify with – sure I know there are things I need to change about my life, but not yet … what’s the hurry? The hurry may be that the Lord’s calling now, not to-morrow. There are opportunities there today, that won’t be there tomorrow. Maybe we need to disconnect from some of the peripherals, and get connected to the essentials. How many ears do we need before we will hear the Lord?