At Home on Earth

IF WE WANT A SOCIALLY JUST and ecologically ourishing world, we need better people. We must become the kind of people who can foster positive change. at was Jesus’ message. He didn’t take up political or military power and make sweeping, top-down societal changes. e kingdom he preached, worked for, and died for was interior. He changed people, one heart at a time, and he trusted that changed people would then change the world—which, we know from history, they did.

If our Christian tradition is going to have any relevance moving forward, it will come from providing us a vision of what we could be and the practical guidance and communal support to grow toward that vision. In short, this is because our tradition helps us become better people who can imagine and create a better world— and become happier and more ful lled in the process.

What does it mean to be a good person? Even with such diversity among us, there are common threads. Good people have joy, connectedness to others, and internal freedom. ey are generous. ey embody the cardinal and theological virtues of our tradition: wisdom, justice, courage, temperance, faith, hope, and love.

How might we become better people? It’s a combination of divine gi and disciplined human e ort to discern and practice what helps us grow in virtue. I’ve found Jesus’ parable of the sower to be a great guide when considering the process of growing in virtue. I don’t want to become entangled in thorns, overwhelmed by the ways of the world. I don’t want to grow in thin soil, unprincipled and incapable of weathering the slightest adversity. I want to sink my roots in rich, deep soil and to bear the best fruit I can for the betterment of the living world. God may ultimately give the growth, but we help with the gardening.

As I described in my most recent book, Making Room, simplifying our lives can trim back those vines and enrich the soil so we can live with greater intentionality, freedom, virtue, and purpose—so that we can be the better people so desperately needed right now. In this and upcoming columns, I’d like to explore several themes that relate to the Gospel call to live more simply.

I’d like to begin with how we use digital technologies such as email and instant messaging, smartphones, social media, and streaming services. ese technologies have come to have an outsized impact on our daily lives. We’re in the grip of a mass addiction to time- and attentionsucking digital distractions, which are literally rewiring our brains and eroding our ability to focus, to pray, or to relate to each other. If the digital world is like food, we have been bingeing indiscriminately.

Simplifying and purifying our relationship with the digital world begins with carefully deciding what content and tools you engage with, just as we would favor dark leafy greens over unhealthy, processed snack foods. Pay close attention to how you feel when you’re scrolling endlessly through your social media feeds or when you’re sucked into yet another TikTok video, news feed item, or Net ix episode.

Your intuition will help you know at a gut level whether something helps or hinders you in becoming the person you want to be. Guided by this feedback, you can choose carefully what you use. Trust that it is quite possible to thrive and stay reasonably informed while using these services less or not at all.

A er discerning which tools and media you want to keep in your “digital diet,” it’s important to develop good

boundaries and practices for when and how you engage with them. For example, I found it absolutely impossible to be focused, much less contemplative, when my phone or laptop pinged me all day with noti cations. So I turned them all o : I don’t get any alerts except texts (and o en I keep my phone on do-not-disturb mode, except for a few numbers). I just check manually at a few speci c times I’ve scheduled.

Sometimes people nd it annoying that I’m not instantly reachable, but most people either haven’t noticed or have adapted. I have also found it deeply nourishing to avoid using screens for the rst hour of my day (and o en the last), and for good chunks of the weekend. You might consider setting time budgets for streaming content and playing games, then track your screen time and even consider putting automatic limits on it.

Doing these two things—intentionally choosing digital content and services and choosing when and how you make use of them—is a great start to freeing yourself from attention-fracturing digital addictions. But without a third step, it’s easy for the thorns to regrow. What will keep you away from the thrall of the digital world is to take all of the time, energy, and attention you are saving and invest it in cultivating better, more satisfying activities. Spend time and attention on your important relationships.

Find high-quality recreational and spiritual activities that connect you with others, with your own body, with the natural world, and with God. Read books. All of these provide the joy of sustained, deep concentration on a single thing at a time, whether that’s prayer or poetry or raking leaves.

How we spend our time and direct our attention are some of the most important decisions we make as Christian disciples. I’d like to see us make those choices as radically as did the early followers of Christ, whose changed hearts became beacons of light in a dark, violent empire. Even though we’ll do it imperfectly, Jesus calls us to nothing less.

• One tip to manage your email inbox is to reduce the infl ow of messages. Unsubscribe from as many lists as you can. In your workplace, discourage the practice of copying every possible colleague connected to a project. Use online calendar tools like Doodle polls to cut down on the emails necessary to set meeting times. • Be aware that YouTube is designed to be highly addictive. You may want to turn off all the video suggestions, or at least give yourself strict time limits to avoid falling down the rabbit hole.

BOTTOM: COURTESY OF KYLE KRAMER; RIGHT: MUNDUS IMAGES/ISTOCK Kyle Kramer is the executive director of the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center (EarthandSpiritCenter.org), which offers interfaith educational programming in meditation, ecology, and social compassion. He is the author of Making Room: Soul-Deep Satisfaction through Simple Living (Franciscan Media). Get Kyle’s latest book, Making Room, available for purchase at Shop.FranciscanMedia.org, Amazon, or wherever books are sold.