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{"id":18386,"date":"2016-09-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=140"},"modified":"2016-09-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T00:00:00","slug":"sacred-distraction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/09\/sacred-distraction\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacred Distraction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I<\/span>n his poignant, deeply personal New York<\/em> essay<\/a> on his distraction addiction, Andrew Sullivan reflects on the silence of sacred places: \u201cFrom the moment I entered a church in my childhood, I understood that this place was different because <\/a>it was so quiet. The Mass itself was full of silences\u2014those liturgical pauses that would never do in a theater, those minutes of quiet after communion when we were encouraged to get lost in prayer, those liturgical spaces that seemed to insist that we are in no hurry here. And this silence demarcated what we once understood as the sacred, marking a space beyond the secular world of noise and business and shopping.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think the relation of silence and the sacred is more complicated than that. Biblical liturgies are awfully noisy, boisterous even, and I don\u2019t agree that the world of noise should be kept wholly outside the sanctuary.<\/p>\n

But Sullivan is right about this: \u201cChristian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"