Some of you may be too young to remember the iconic song by The Who.

 

So, who are you?

 

I wonder how many of us have stopped to really ask this question of ourselves. Most of us don’t really want to know if truth be told. I am a mashup of failure and love and loss, of ruin and despair and infinite hope, of unbridled curiosity coupled with an introverted, quiet spirit in a noisy, unruly world.

 

I was untimely born. I spend most of my days among shield maidens, roaming ancient worlds of wyverns and wyrms, and I yearn to be that genteel southern woman with a heart as fierce as a man. Mostly, I long to be still. In a world which frowns on quiet contemplation, I am grossly out of step. And, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

Lost is the art of listening beneath the bombardment of pings and group messages with no meaning, and self-indulgent selfies screaming for an elusive second of attention from someone, anyone, before they are snatched away. Along the way, our culture is dying. Robbed of any real emotion. Any meaning. Our stories are lost.

 

Where once we would gather around the dinner table or on the porch and listen to strange wondrous stories of our fathers, now we huddle hunched over like slaves to the screen. Mesmerized by the flashes until we are stricken dumb. My children would argue. How do I share with them? How can they miss what they have never known?

 

I was untimely born. For I move to the rhythms of the wind beholden to the star song and marvel at being, and I thank God for being. For seeing His work, His infinite glory. I marvel at ages past and still to come and hope for a new day to dawn. Many will argue. Want to debate me. Expound upon the advances of the modern age and that of women. Far be it for me to discourage anyone.

 

But, I wonder of the time when stories were told upon the stage beneath a summer night, on silent screens, where not every breath was prepackaged and marketed until the heart of the story was unrecognizable. Until one story mirrored the next. Until nothing authentic and real remains and each is a cheap imitation of the next.

 

We are westernized into euthanasia. Like the proverbial frog in the slow boiling pot of water. After all, they say there is nothing new under the sun.

 

But I for one still love intimate conversations. The musings of Tolstoy and Twain, Beowulf and the Norse Myths, Tolkien and the Bible. Some say the world may pass me by. But I wonder if that is a bad thing.

 

Recently, while visiting my mother in Mississippi…my mama with no computer or answering machine, it became painfully obvious of the intrusion my phone was on our precious time. No one was dying. But my children have become accustomed to real time access and panic ensues when a text is not answered. Instantly. In fairness to them, it’s what they know. It’s what we know. How sad.

 

No one on the other end of the phone is as important as the one face to face. Unless they are dying.

 

So, I mourn the slower pace of life when people took the time to have coffee and listen to your day instead of clicking like on FB or Instagram. How sad we are so starved we crave the likes. Count the number.

 

Everyone is so busy…doing nothing. But it is all so very important.

 

I was untimely born, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.