ABSTRACT
When I was fifteen, I confessed to my mother that for the ten years she required me to attend church, I never paid attention to what the priest was talking about. Without hesitation, she responded, “That may be true, but you were also not watching TV, talking, playing, or running around. You were sitting still and in your own mind for an hour a week.” Touché. There are fewer and fewer opportunities for us to be in our own minds for a stretch of time before our devices beckon us to engage. Author and psychotherapist Gunilla Norris teaches meditation and leads contemplative workshops, and summarizes the need to be in our own minds in this way: “Within each of us, there is a silence, a silence as vast as the universe. And when we experience that silence, we remember who we are.”1 We have a choice to stay unplugged when we are alone. We need to remind one another and ourselves to make that choice.
