Me and My Machines

So many people that I love have disappeared lately. I never say a person died because death is being away from God, and life is being near God. I want to believe that the people who have left their bodies are near God, so I just say they disappeared. When I stop to think about where they are without their bodies and all, I wonder how they will survive without machines.

There was a time when aspiring immortals had hardly any machines at all. They were like birds flying through the skies, landing on branches and then plunging into berry-filled bushes. Nowadays we operate all sorts of contraptions using them to connect ourselves to each other and to learn what others think we should know. This morning I was listening to the radio and heard the same info about ten times in fifteen minutes. Maybe I was supposed to turn it off after I heard it once. I kept thinking they would tell me something new. Silly me. Of course the most fun machine is my beloved computer because like the genius-telephone it is a two-way street.

I know the people that I love, who have disappeared are still alive. But I wonder what life is like without any machines at all. And that makes me stop to think that my body is a machine too.

When I separate my true self from my body self, like I will be someday and for a very long time, then I feel very light, like an angel. I am free to do the most important thing, to love God in a pure straightforward way. It doesn’t matter what I look like or what kind of clothes I’m wearing or if I have real gold dangling from my ears. This is fun! Sure I can’t hug anymore, and I’ll bet that’s what I will miss most about not having a body, but I can still sing from my heart. My heart, not the bloody one but the real one is invisible with me, just like my thoughts are. And I can talk to people without sound and they’ll know it’s me, just like I can hear my Boss talk to me now.

Flying through time is much easier without a body too.

Since my body is so much like having a machine, if I try hard enough I can be the boss of my body like I am the boss of my computer or my cell phone or my car. I will only feed it what it should have and I will make sure it’s always clean and lubricated and I will exercise it regularly to keep the oxygen flowing right inside and to keep the muscles strong so they can hold up the organs. Yes, I will be a good machine owner, especially during Lent when I will go into the desert with Jesus. Less food, more water, more quietful listening, more rest. It was wonderful that Jesus healed so many people, but I’ll bet that He preferred that they would take better care of their bodies so they wouldn’t get sick in the first place.

During Lent, maybe I’ll even try to live more like the Holy Spirit Who has no body, unless you count that dove but that was temporary, than Jesus on the Cross. That is to say that I want to see how much I can be a pure person and not an amalgam of person and machine. It could be fun to walk through the day, being aware of the difference between the forever me and the body me. Maybe I'll even try to cut down on the other machines in my life as well. During Lent, I hope I can become closer to Our Father Who Art in Heaven without any machines.