Going Off the Grid

CNN reports that 300,000 Chicagoans lost power due to storms last night. I had a meeting, and upon arriving home to the blare of warning sirens, I found the kids huddled downstairs. So we all got cozy with beanbags and blankets, with candles and flashlights ready. Ian was on point at mission control, tracking the radar on our Macbook as Sophie and I updated everyone on newly posted warnings via the iPhone. The power eventually went out (for no more than a couple of minutes). All the kids were pretty freaked out, and it was pretty interesting to note the contrast: reliance on battery-powered computers, phones, and flashlights as the rest of the house/block/city went lights-out. Our security blankets (computers, phones, lights) seemed pretty feeble, and, of course, batteries always run out.

I'm not sure I have a point with any of this. Two thoughts come to mind, however: 1) What would it look like for us to go completely off-line, to get off the grid, to play "little house on the prairie"? The latter is a specific reference to a question Julie asked the girls as they waited for the imminent tornado to rip our house to shreds (too much media coverage of Joplin, MO and Birmingham, AL, I guess): "What would Laura Ingalls Wilder do in this situation?" No computers, no weatherpeople, no warning sirens, no flashlights, no basements. Annie very wisely suggested, "Do you think we should pray?" So we prayed.

Going off the grid seems quite romantic, but it is probably not the answer. I think of Christopher McCandless (of Into the Wild fame--by the way, if you've not read the Jon Krakauer novel, I would encourage you to do so), who sought to leave civilization and go all Walden (see Henry David Thoreau) by living off the land in the wilds of Alaska. He found, tragically, that nature is no romantic. Nature grinds you up and spits you out. It is romantic, indeed, to suggest that we simply must go back to our "natural state," and eschew all modern contrivances. To quote Annie Dillard: "We are freaks, the world is fine, and let us all go have lobotomies to restore us to a natural state. We can leave...lobotomized, go back to the creek, and live on its banks as untroubled as any muskrat or reed. You first." Getting rid of computers and mobile phones and Wal-Mart and airplanes and medicine, etc. is not going to solve our problem. The issue is much, much deeper than that. Besides, it's got to sound silly of me to smugly announce that I will not succumb to social media, etc. (where does it end? vinyl records? rotary telephones?). Many dudes have tried that and failed. It is a losing battle.

Oh, yeah, the other thought: 2) The point remains that we have a remarkable tendency toward idolatry. For the Israelites it was Baals and Astartes, the rather silly idols of their day. We are no less silly, putting our trust in and reliance upon computers and cellular phones, medicine, emergency services, government...idolatry all around! Kryzsztof Kieslowski wrote, directed, and produced a ten-part miniseries for Polish television back in the 1980's called The Decalogue. It remains as one of my favorite series. Each short film is a meditation upon one of the Ten Commandments. The first is called "I Am the Lord Thy God; You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me." It tells the story of a computer professor and single dad who finally allows his son to skate on the pond outside of their apartment because the computer formulates (based on the air temp, weight of the boy, etc.) that it is safe. The child falls through the ice and dies. Putting our faith in things (as Keller would say, making good things into ultimate things) always leads to death (of some kind or another).

So where do we go from here? I think we turn out the lights and turn off the computer and phone on a very regular basis and we pray, pray, pray...