“You and I live in a glancing society, and yet, Christianity is a religion for gazers.” Jackson, Among Kings
As a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, you had to be diligent if you didn’t want to miss your favorite TV shows. You couldn’t just wait until the series was over and binge them all at once. You had to be the first of your siblings to plant yourself on the living room couch, because one thing was certain. He who held the remote, held all the power. And if you didn’t share the same taste in shows, and you couldn’t coerce or convince them to change channels, you just missed your shows…FOREVER. I’m sure this scene would sound like the plot of a horror movie to my own kids. We’ve joked that we knew what real “hustle” was. One sibling would go get snacks while the other watched commercials, and then yelled, “IT’S BACK ON!!!”, and at that point, we could leap small couches in a single bound to get back in time.
One of the shows my brother and I didn’t agree on was Mr. Rogers. Although his kindness has earned its own place in history today, it was the tempo that I found downright irritating. I would walk through the room, giving it my full 5 second attention span (it was longer then) and would conclude, “Meh”, and walk on. Given the choice, I preferred Sesame Street. At least there were occasional celebrity appearances.
But Fred Rogers was onto something, even back in the 60s when the show first aired. He was the antithesis to a TV culture that was just starting to speed up. And this counter culture presentation was absolutely authentic and intentional. There may have been a few kids, like myself, that gave up on it. But for others, they felt seen. As Jackson states, it was less about glancing, or really scrolling, and more about gazing. Rogers was about the beauty of pausing. Of staring out a window until you notice something you wouldn’t have seen if you weren’t watching so long – a bird building a nest, squirrels chasing each other, a neighbor struggling to drag their trash cans to the curb. And in those moments of pause, Rogers would encourage his audience to look for ways to be kind and help. Some have even said that Rogers himself seemed to experience time differently than other people. He wasn’t bound to his calendar or even his watch. He tried to spend his time doing something of value, for the amount of time that it took, rather than time-boxing and moving on. It is a strange and perplexing thing in all of Western culture, but particularly at this moment. If TV was just starting to speed up in the 60s, media has reached warp speed today. There are Tik Tok transitions that run faster than my attention span and I am struggling next to my children to keep up.
It still takes intention to gaze, which is active and appreciative, rather than glaze over and zone out. It takes fighting a habit to not jump at every text message alert when you’re having a deep conversation with a friend. Our time has become one of the most hotly traded commodities. And although God wants our time, and growing spiritually requires it, He seldom demands it, because we have our free will.
As I am rounding out another decade, I personally want to set some better intentions with how I spend my time. No matter how far along you are in years, start noticing your idle time and where it goes. See if you can spend a few minutes staring out the window instead of staring at your phone. See if you can find the beauty in pausing. See if you can recapture idle time and idle attention, and spend it listening to His voice.