REBOOT

Recently I had trouble with some computer functions (which is not unusual) and messed around with the thing for an hour and a half and finally remembered the advice to reboot when things like this happen. It fixed the computer.
Reboot: the act or an instance of shutting down and restarting something.

Then I started thinking of all the other things in my life that might need a reboot: meditation, study, silence and prayer, or sleep, time, food, exercise and relaxation. Shut down and start over.

Richard Rohr, Catholic priest and teacher recently wrote:
“Let’s be honest: religion has probably never had such a bad name. Christianity is now seen as “irrelevant” by some, “toxic” by many, and often as a large part of the problem rather than any kind of solution. Some of us are almost embarrassed to say we are Christian because of the negative images that word conjures in others’ minds. Young people especially are turned off by how judgmental, exclusionary, impractical, and ineffective Christian culture seems to be.”

Maybe Christianity could use a reboot.

Seneca (4 BC-65 AD) a stoic philosopher gave a good Reboot idea: “What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.”

That’s perhaps the most important reboot.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” Jesus