We recently experienced a heatwave, with the temperature rising above 100ºF for several days. The grass around the rectory slowly faded from deep green to a mix of green and yellow. Our cat, who wears a fur coat, lost interest in chasing the local wildlife and contented himself with sprawling across the path like a drunk. One day it was so hot that when I went outside my eyelids started to hurt. I joked with my wife that it was like going out at night when you lived on the planet Mercury. 

The heat caused the copper wire on a telephone pole in Limestone Road to catch fire. This was significant, because the copper wire delivered internet services to half of Wilmington. As a result, for two whole days we were without any internet connection.

We take the internet so much for granted these days that, when it goes down, the pattern of daily life experiences a sudden jolt. In my Inbox, the same six emails showed up for two days. An article accessed the day before was frozen on my laptop. I decided to reread it, and discovered how much I had missed the first time. A meditation I had written for the Fourth of July couldn’t be sent until July 6th, by which time it was old news.

I wanted to watch England play Mexico in the World Cup, but it was not to be. But then, something happened as a result of being offline. I began to think of other ways to spend the time. My wife and I played cards. I read a book. I listened to the new Paul McCartney LP. I walked outside and breathed in the air and thought of nothing. Without a feed of news and opinions, I felt strangely liberated, and remembered a time BC - before connectivity - when all of humanity had to live like this. 

If the history of the world were condensed into a day, then human beings have been online for about one second before midnight. In the past, when you wanted to communicate with others, you wrote letters by hand on paper using a pen or crow quill. This is better for personal correspondence, since there is a connection between heart, head and hand in the act of writing.

Imagine how our great poets, musicians and artists would have coped with 24 hour a day scrutiny. Few of them were saints, and all of them would have had much shorter careers due to public intrusion into their private goings-on. Nigel Kennedy, the famous violinist, has no email or internet - if you want him to play a concert, you have to write him a letter. Maybe he’s on to something. 

The greatest gift in not having the internet is the space it clears in your life. It is then up to you to choose what to do with it. Of course, the constant flow of information is a temptation that is hard to give up. As for God, I realize that sometimes he has to compete for my attention. 

Here I may have stumbled onto the dangers of the internet and, by extension, Artificial Intelligence. It has become a god to us. It fulfills a need within us for information while, if recent polls are anything to go by, it makes us unhappy.

What is the answer? There are false gods and there is the one true God. It is better for our health and happiness if we pay more attention to the one than to the other. Perhaps there is a sliding scale, whereby the more you pray to the real God, the more in touch with reality you are? There is a “peace that passes understanding” and, I might add, that passes our desire to be connected online.

The smoking telephone pole has done me a favor. It has prompted me to change the daily pattern of my life for the good of my soul and for my happiness. Perhaps there is a reason while they call the internet the world wide web - like a spider’s web it catches you and holds you captive. Can I free myself from it? The absence of internet connectivity may have been a blessing in disguise. The question is, can I give up my online time and offer it instead to God?

Father David