We had left somehow this blog in order to perform an experiment in technology, in withdrawing from technology, and I wanted to say some things regarding the experiment for us.
We had arrived to Barcelona city three weeks ago, to visit family, and we were coming from rural, non technologic American Christian society...the cultural shock was expected.
The things that we were more obviously shocked were the polluted air, (children had a hard time breathing the first days, with so many people smoking in the sidewalks), the noise ( we could not hear each other talking in the street), the amount of people, (it takes effort not to bump with people continuously), the dress and bombarding media which seemed to come out of a XX rated movie. We had been sensitized back to a modest way of dressings and here in the city the fashions dictate such an immodest apparel, well, the women go with tights and short jackets in the street, nothing else! but for them this is the normal thing, the regular outfit, they have been sensitized ( or better said desensitized) to an opposite order of things. Instead of concealing your forms, they emphasize them appealing to the sexual appetite. The advertisements full blown in the streets are also as direct and crude.
The bad thing for me is that people are not aware of this, we are not aware how the environment indoctrinates our thinking, I am sure if I had to stay in the city, i would fall into the same desensitizing program, unless I was in daily contact with people that thought differently. And that is exactly the clue, I asked around, where are the christian people here?
I found the Opus Day people, very nice group of people following the doctrines of the church and God, they believe in a total immersion in the world, working in the world but not of it...how do they do it? Constant teaching as their founder Josep Maria Escriva never tired of saying, a constant teaching of the scriptures, daily Mass, weekly seminars or meetings, monthly conferences, etc...
I asked also about a more poorer version of Christians and we found group that decided 25 years ago to share their belongings and money, they are still there, in the city, living in the same apartment complex and tending each one to its job out in the city with the love of God, how do they do it? daily meditations together on the scriptures, day and night, and singing, weekly gathering with a meal.
Now I am up to learn about the Order of the Brotherhood of the Lamb, yet I am pretty sure the way they face the world in the city is too with daily food, daily Mass, daily reinforcement or teachings agains the teachings of the world, unless you are indoctrinated in God´s ways, you are being indoctrinated in the world´s ways.
Here in the city my mom has a computer at home, I have been using it as needed, and one day my daughter told me: ¨mom, i just had a dream, somebody was telling me in the dream how you cannot do both things at a time, either you are cooking, grading our homework and making family life, or you are in the computer.¨
I think the dream was right, I cannot do both, so that is why we will keep our computer time when we go to the library, and we will have a computer free home.
On the other hand, I think like people could be brought out of the worldly ways with this media, the world´s own media, just like in the movie Matrix, the real people sought to go to the artificial world to bring out a choice, to bring the people that were called out, just the same way we decided we would use the computer to say there is another way of living, to say there is a choice.
