As most of you know, I have a chance once each year to share a few thoughts with the community — during Fall Convocation — on a matter that’s central to our work together. In past years, we’ve covered everything from the importance of church, to the logic of moral standards, to the need to be alert world citizens, to the perpetual relevance of the liberal arts.

This year, I’d like to say a few words about a matter that feels equally important and that affects all of us in a very fundamental way, and that’s the constant sense of busyness that has come, more and more, to be the mark of modern lives.

I’ve been contemplating this matter of busyness for years now, trying to get to the bottom of why it seems such a pervasive problem. I know most of us on the staff and faculty seem to be pressed to keep ahead of our respective professional curves. And I hear students say they’re so busy that they can’t get to bed till hours I’d forgotten were even on the clock.

Let me start with one fairly obvious observation on why life seems full, and that is that we seem to be fully occupied just doing the regular stuff. All of you take classes, participate in sports, perform in plays, play in the orchestra, tend to the tasks of student government, and all the rest — and sometimes you just hang out. There’s nothing new here in the history of college life, with the possible exception that lots of you work longer hours on Principia jobs to help cover college costs. So far so good. But there are significant new factors that bear heavily on the pace of our lives and that, it seems to me, touch centrally on the practice of Christian Science in these demanding times.

Certainly one of these new factors is that more of you — maybe most of you by now — have dorm rooms that look like mini-Circuit Citys: rooms chock full of technology that never inhabited dorm rooms before and that veritably demands hours of your attention — TVs and DVDs and the Internet and all the rest. These things absorb time like a dry sponge.

The important issue here is that what’s going on in your dorm room is a link to what’s going on in the whole society. Notwithstanding the pleasures of watching a good movie once in a while after a long day, there are some serious consequences associated with the proliferation and accessibility of technology that we need to face as Principians and as a society. And this is the issue to which I would like devote the next 20 minutes.

Sociologists and other commentators are starting to take note of the societal consequences of the new technologies we live with, and in particular of being constantly plugged in — of being constantly diverted by the stimuli with which we now surround ourselves. We seem unable to take our doses of technology in moderate measures, but allow ourselves to be bombarded constantly by movies, CDs, ringing cell phones, pagers, voice mail, and ceaseless streams of e-mails. It’s hard to have five minutes of silence without the computer announcing that we have mail.

As educator and author Neil Postman notes, people have fallen in love with the very technologies “that undo their capacities to think.” 1

You may be interested that, according to one U.S. newsweekly, the average American office worker now sends or receives more than 200 messages a day: voice mail, e-mail, faxes, post-it notes. Cell phones, pagers, and handheld computers guarantee that we’re always plugged in, always on call.2 There are obviously great advantages associated with these technological advances. That goes without saying. But one significant disadvantage, as one commentator describes, is that “the response time between request and action” — between the tasks we have to perform in life and the timeframe within which we have to perform them — “has shrunk dramatically.”3 That’s really the essence of it.

One researcher at Microsoft has a term for how this affects our lives. He calls it “continuous partial attention,” meaning that it has become all but impossible to devote our thought to one thing alone at any given time.4 Continuous partial attention. It’s a formula for continuous restlessness because it means that our thoughts are always dwelling on undone tasks.5

We’re just beginning to comprehend the full extent of the implications. Among other things, it means that we’re increasingly tempted to confuse busyness with accomplishment; to substitute the quantity of our activity for the quality of our activity; to display our busyness as a badge of honor. How many times have you been tempted to boast to a roommate or friend about how many all-nighters you’ve had to put in? In rare cases that may be commendable, but more than likely it’s an indication of a life not well managed; of a life — if I may put it far more bluntly — not necessarily lived with a great deal of maturity.

Here’s another important implication: Researchers have found that because we flit constantly between tasks in response to the incessant demands of technology, we’ve lost the capacity for sustained concentration. Since 1965, for example, the average advertisement on network TV has shrunk from 53 seconds to 25 seconds. Fifteen second ads are now commonplace, and two- and three-second ads are becoming so. As for news, the average sound bite has shrunk to just eight seconds.6 Meanwhile, the average length of a shot — an image — on network television is now only 3.5 seconds, so that the eye simply never rests. As Neil Postman says, the screen is always moving on to the next image, never pausing to grasp meaning, never pausing to provide context.7

As Robert MacNeil, the one-time public television news anchor, explains: “The idea is to keep everything brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to provide constant stimulation through variety, novelty, action, and movement. You are required . . . to pay attention to no concept, no character, and no problem for more than a few seconds at a time.” That visual stimulation, MacNeil says, is a substitute for thought, the enemy of introspection.8

How can anyone possibly overestimate the consequences when, at a time when the world — because of its unprecedented complexity — needs more sustained attention than ever before, is instead getting less sustained attention than ever before? When we’re expecting our news outlets to elucidate an increasingly complex planet in eight-second modules. When we’re satisfying ourselves that if we watch the headlines we’re understanding the forces that are shaping our world. It’s an astonishingly dangerous development in a democratic society, where leaders thrust their fingers in the air every day to gauge the winds of public opinion. On what can public opinion possibly be based in this restless world of eight-second news spots?

As you can see, I’m a bit of a Jeremiah on this subject, not just because it keeps us from giving the world the sustained attention it needs but because it keeps us from giving God such sustained attention. And this is an infinitely more important matter. To put it as simply as I can, our incessant busyness is one of the greatest threats to our progress as Christian Scientists and to the prosperity of a movement upon which, I’m totally convinced, the stability and sanity of the world largely depend.

Let me explain the point this way. In an era in which fast-moving visual images are replacing the printed word as the main source of our information, most of our learning comes through the process of perception. Under these circumstances, the capacity for conception tends to atrophy. But it is the very capacity for conception — for sustained, rational, sequential, analytical thinking — that is an indispensable element of the very prayer that, in turn, is indispensable to our own salvation and to the world’s salvation.

Mrs. Eddy puts it this way. “The best spiritual type of Christly method for uplifting human thought and imparting divine Truth,” she says, “is stationary power, stillness, and strength; and when this spiritual ideal is made our own, it becomes the model for human action.”9

Mind’s “power is displayed and its presence felt in eternal stillness and immovable Love,” she says elsewhere.10 In a third place she speaks of the “hindrance” to spiritual growth that comes from “material motion.”11

Let’s be clear about this. Unless we learn to unplug ourselves from time to time, unless we learn to gear down a bit each day, unless we find a way to gain a sense of mental peace in our day, unless we find a way to enter “the quiet sanctuary of earnest longings” each day, unless we retain the capacity for sustained attention — we risk losing our capacity to be effective Christian Scientists.12 And since being an effective Christian Scientist is the single most important thing we could ever want, we really have to think pretty hard about how we can reclaim that peace — the peace we need in this restless, relentless, un-relaxing society.

That’s one reason we have quiet time each day during the quarter — that precious half hour that gives us at least a modicum of mental space.

If you think busyness is a modern problem, by the way, think again. Back in 1928, the Principia executive committee that served Mrs. Morgan adopted a year-long study project on the subject, “What is the remedy for a sense of over-activity in our work?” Maybe that’s a clue that over-activity is always part of mortal mind’s scheme to keep us from doing what needs to be done.

Mrs. Morgan’s son William — “Mr. Billy,” as he was known — hit the nail on the head in one of the committee’s discussions. “Restlessness,” he said, “can only result from resistance to spiritual activity.” You see the irony here: that restlessness can only be stilled by activity, by spiritual activity, by that “unlabored motion of the divine energy” that Mrs. Eddy describes in Science and Health.13

One of our students demonstrated the point beautifully recently. As she recounts, the pressures of college life were creating an intense sense of restlessness, and she yearned for a sense of peace. So, one day, she forced herself to sit down and make a list of everything that seemed to be causing the mental agitation. After she made the list she prayerfully handled everything on it. She worked with the Bible passage, “Be still and know that I am God,” and knew — as she put it — that there was “always enough time for God to express Himself fully.

“By getting clear on the fact that infinite good was present now and included God’s harmonious, all-encompassing government and unlimited activity,” she said, “I found a deep and enduring sense of peace that replaced the restlessness I’d been feeling. . . . As it turned out,” she said, “I only had about two hours to complete the work I thought would take ten hours. But I completed everything I needed to with great ease and joy.

“I decided I was going to put God first, no matter what,” she added. “And every day I did that, things would go so much more harmoniously and my work would be so much more efficient.”

You see how it works. And, by the way, the issue isn’t the exact amount of time we pray. The issue is whether, during the time we do pray, we gain a clear, peaceful sense of God’s presence. That’s the test of whether we’ve done enough.

Mrs. Eddy once remarked that some of her students healed with the facility of Jesus’ apostles. That’s quite an amazing statement. Interestingly, those students didn’t live so very long ago. And they were just folks: teachers and tradesmen and lawyers and housewives. And they were able to heal this way — literally restoring sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf — because they prayed, earnestly. And if we are to pray just as earnestly — and with the same dramatic results — we have to have the one thing society is more unwilling now than at any time in human history to give us, and that’s mental space, peace, stillness.

Now consider this, if you will. If you go to bed tonight not having carved out the time during the day to find that stillness; if you’ve not read your Lesson and also prayed for yourself and the world; if you’ve not made this time, please understand that you’ve made a conscious decision. It’s really important that we don’t rationalize on this point by saying, “Well, I sure wanted to pray but I just have too many demands on my time.” We are not governed by irresistible forces. We’re rational people and we make decisions each day that mould and shape our lives. If you don’t seem to have the time to do that one indispensable thing that being a Christian Scientist is all about, it’s not that you don’t have the time. It’s that you’ve chosen not to make the time. It’s that simple. We have to be completely honest with ourselves about this.

I was struck by something I read in a well-known Bible commentary recently.14 The writer says that “one of the most distressing things about us is our inability to see the relationship between cause and effect. It never seems to dawn upon us that our tensions and our fears spring out of our lack of quiet worship. We blame the rush for the neglect of worship, but the rushing is itself a result of that neglect. The disease which makes us unhealthy is regarded as a valid reason for failing to do the things which will restore us to health. It is a vicious circle, and until we can be saved from our blindness we shall lack the power to put first things first. If we would live true to our heritage as sons [and daughters] of God, there is no other way than keeping close to the Father. That means living in His presence and taking the time to listen to His voice. It is the mark of a very foolish generation when it talks about not having time for this essential practice.”

So the only way we can find the time to do what needs to be done — in other words, the only way we can govern our lives intelligently — is to put first things first. Changing schedules or reordering the academic day may help. No doubt about it. But such changes will not get to the real heart of the problem, and the heart of the problem is our willingness to make intelligent personal decisions. There’s no other way.

Now I know that all of us are involved in good things each day: teaching and learning, extracurricular activities, all the rest. But we do need to be alert to the fact that, at a point, the good can become the enemy of the best. By trying to do so many “good” things, we often deprive ourselves of the time to do the “best” thing, the most important thing. And learning to decide what’s best — and making time for what’s best — may be the most important lesson you can learn at Principia.

As Mrs. Morgan says: “If we think we have more than we can do, then we are taking on some work that God has not given us.”15 We need to be like the widow woman in the Bible who gave of her want. We need to give of our want — our want not so much in terms of money but in terms of time. That’s the sacrifice that will win the commendation of God.

So why does all this matter so much? It matters so much for two reasons.

The first is that we live in an age that, arguably, faces the greatest challenges, and also the greatest opportunities, in human history. Neither should be underestimated. We are entirely capable of meeting the challenges and of rising to the opportunities, but only — only — if we’re willing to put first things first. The logic of spiritual history has brought us to this point. How utterly humanity needs us to do this — to put first things first.

The other reason this matters so much is this: To be perfectly honest, some folks who pass through this hallowed place eventually make the decision to leave Christian Science. That’s obviously true of people who don’t come to Principia as well. We love them not one whit less, of course, but one thing needs to be said here. I may be going out on a limb, but my guess is that one explanation for this departure from Christian Science is that some of them may simply never have had in their entire lives one of those extraordinary moments that comes when we are entirely at peace; when we are completely alone with God; when, in that “quiet sanctuary of earnest longings” Mrs. Eddy talks about, we feel His presence and love as deeply and as surely as we feel our own existence; when we step away from the cell phones and TV and Internet to still the restless thought, and in those moments of peace feel deeply and powerfully what it really means to be a Christian Scientist. If you’ve ever had this experience, if you’ve ever once touched the hem of Truth’s garment in this manner, then you know that nothing will ever be the same again. You know there’s no going back. You know that nothing could ever bring the same deep satisfaction. That nothing could ever impart the same profound joy. That nothing could ever make you care so deeply for all of humanity.

I hope and pray — earnestly — that you will have such moments this year. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things” — everything that you need; everything that you deserve — “shall be added unto you.”16 I know it will be a good year. It’s wonderful to have you back.