I know I have observed many coworkers, couples and families out for a meal together who spend the entire time starring at their smartphone. Truth be told it seems odd to see people gathered around a table, ostensibly spending time with each other, completely ignoring the other people present because they are fiddling with their phones. Of course, this takes its toll on relationships. If you ignore your spouse, friends and coworkers enough in favor of your digital companion you may discover it is your only companion left. Relationships take time and emotional energy and if you are investing all of it in your smartphone you will pay the price. Therefore I applaud the notice that people are giving to this subtle cost of smartphone ownership.

That said, I am not sure that I agree with their methodology for addressing the problem. Completely ditching a smartphone because you can't stop checking it or playing with it seems like an admission that a small slab of metal, glass and microchips is stronger than the human will. It is an admission that the smartphone owns us instead of the other way around.

I have also struggled to ignore the siren call of the smartphone nestled in my pocket and focus on the people and events in front of me. My first smartphone was a Blackberry (well before the iPhone came on the scene) and in a few weeks my wife referred to it as the "other woman." After a while and with the help of my wife, I learned that just because my Blackberry beeped I didn't have to check right then. As my wife would say, "I love you but you're not that important. You're not the president. The world will not end if you don't read that email right now." She was right. It was hard but I learned to resist the urge to stare at my Blackberry all the time.

But then the iPhone arrived in 2007 and I immediately ditched my Blackberry for it. That is when my old problem resurfaced. Now I had to resist the urge to surf the web, check the weather and stocks, and play music all the time. It only got worse with the advent of the App Store, games and Twitter. I was off the wagon big time and that was the case for some time.

By the summer of last year, I knew that my smartphone usage had become a problem but didn't know what to do about it. Fortunately, an opportunity came along to address my smartphone habit. This was the 9 day silent retreat at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado that I attended the first part of August 2012. The retreat guidelines suggested that attendees limit their use of technology while participating to better focus their attention and energies on developing their spirituality and prayer life. While this was offered as a "suggestion" it was "enforced" by the circumstances and location of the monastery high in Rocky Mountains. There was little to no cell signal most of the time and the only onsite internet connection was a single computer with dial up. After numerous vain attempts to locate a couple of bars of signal to check Twitter I gave up and put my iPhone in airplane mode. For the first couple of days I carried it in my pocket as a security blanket but then decided to just leave it on the desk in my room. I would occasionally take it with me on a hike for photos and music but for the most part I was off the grid and living life sans iPhone. I have to admit it was liberating.

For the rest of my time at the monastery I lived life without my smartphone and tether to the internet. I read more. I wrote more. I journaled prolifically. I prayed and meditated. I examined parts of my soul that had not been paid sufficient attention for some time. I believe this was possible because I was not distracted by my iPhone.

But then my time at St. Benedict's came to a close and as I rode back to Denver airport, I entered cell coverage and my connection to the internet was re-established. Twitter and my RSS feeds resumed their siren call. Emails began landing in my iPhone inbox. However, something was different and that something was me. Despite the arrival of notifications and alerts, my iPhone stayed in my pocket and after about 15 minutes of successive alerts disrupting my thoughts, I muted my phone. I decided that my smartphone could wait a while and that I would rather spend my time watching the scenic beauty of the Rocky Mountains than a glowing screen. My time at the monastery had provided me a sabbatical from technology and with newfound clarity I now had a different perspective on smartphones and their appropriate role in my life. This sabbath reminded me that technology is there to assist my life and not distract me from living it. My iPhone has a part to play in my life but it should not consume my life.

Maybe some people need to completely remove the temptation of the smartphone from their lives to avoid its deleterious effects. But maybe that approach is too easy. It is too easy because it allows us to avoid confronting the impulses that prompt us to overuse the technology that sits in our pockets. The daily struggle of making good choices that reflect our deepest values builds our character. By avoiding the use of smartphones altogether we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to grow and refine our character.

We might also be depriving ourselves of technology that allows us to be more efficient in our use of time and complete our work in a more timely fashion so that we have more time to focus on the people and relationships that matter to us. The same iPhone that has distracted me from spending time with my kids while I tried to finish another level of Angry Birds has also allowed me to capture an idea for an upcoming sermon before I had a chance to sit at my computer keyboard. Our smartphones are two-edged swords, capable of bringing benefit or woe. The power to use them for good or ill is literally in our hands. It is time to take responsibility for our choices and exercise restraint when necessary.

Since my return from the monastery this past summer, I have established what I call "technology sabbaths" where I put my iPhone down or leave it in my pocket as a way of creating healthy limits on its use. In this way I ensure that I own the phone instead of the other way around while still enjoying the myriad of benefits it brings to my life. Once our family is seated at the dinner table my iPhone is nowhere to be seen. It is on my nightstand or in my pocket but it does not make an appearance at the table. When our family gathers around the table for a meal it is a sacred time. The technology sabbath continues as we leave the table and move into the evening. Without the psychological encumbrance of my iPhone I am free to help my sons with their homework or play Legos with them.

Another place where I have declared a sabbath from my iPhone is when I am on a date with my wife. If we are out for dinner or a movie she should never see my iPhone - ever. It sits in my pocket with the ringer and alerts muted. The woman who loves me despite my faults and foibles and has given birth to our children deserves more than a distracted portion of my time. She deserves my full attention. If the sitter calls in the event of an emergency with the kids, I'll answer it. I'll know it is a sitter because I've set up custom vibrate patterns for them. That way I'm won't be constantly looking at my phone to make sure it is not an emergency and inadvertently see an email that might distract me.

Naturally, I extend this smartphone sabbath to my worship and prayer times. For those activities I prefer to operate in analog mode. While I am aware of apps and digital resources that could enhance my effectiveness as a worship leader or help develop my spiritual life I am reticent to use them at this point. God deserves my undivided attention. When I am worshiping or praying I have other, far more important matters on my heart than the proper place of technology in my life.

What I am trying to say in all this is that our smartphones represent both opportunity and challenge. With the establishment of appropriate boundaries through the adoption of "technology sabbaths" we can have the best of both worlds. It is possible to discipline ourselves and adopt the principle of moderation. Life is not a choice between being plugged into the Matrix or becoming a Luddite. Insisting otherwise creates a false choice and denies us the opportunity to grow.

In addition to the above concerns, what deeply troubles me is the arrogant self-righteousness that surrounds the issue of "gay marriage."  As a pastor I regularly meet with people who are experiencing significant issues in their marriage so I am well aware that the condition of many heterosexual marriages is actually quite fragile. Some couples are barely holding their relationship together and are doing so out a concern for the impact a divorce would have on their finances or their kids rather than a respect for the institution of marriage or a desire to build a loving relationship. They are just endeavoring to persevere.  I also meet with couples who are preparing to get married in our church and I help them work through our church's premarital counseling survey and companion workbook in an effort to help them discover the issues they will face in the first years of their marriage.  When I sit down with them, I encourage them to take the process seriously because statistics tells us that a little over 40% of first marriages end in divorce.  If you had to drive a car that catastrophically failed 40% of the time you would think carefully before starting the ignition and driving someplace. In addition, I have been married for 17 years and my own experience with marriage tells me that living in a committed, loving relationship with someone for any length of time is hard and something that requires work and compromise.  Indeed, there are many days that I wonder why my wife puts up with me at all.

Consequently, I have a deep sense of humility when it comes to marriage and I am profoundly disturbed by the arrogance and sense of superiority that pervades much of discussion from those who oppose gay marriage.  Maybe they don't intend it this way, but these self-appointed guardians of the sanctity of marriage act as though their marital relationships are all in good order so they are somehow qualified to pass judgement on someone else's relationship.  My experience tells me that most of us are not qualified to do so and that if someone looked under the hood of our marriage they would find a great deal about which to be concerned.

I guess what I would like to say is this: Until you are properly taking care of your own marriage, you have no business poking your nose into someone else's committed relationship - whether it be homosexual or heterosexual. As a wise rabbi from Nazareth once said, " Let you who is without sin cast the first stone." All of us could stand a healthy dose of humility before we start critiquing someone else's relationship. No one is perfect. All of our relationships could stand to be improved. When you never utter an unkind word to your spouse or always put their interests above your own, then you can tell other people when they can get married and to whom. Until then, you need to mind your own business and take care of your relationship with your spouse. If you're busy taking care of your own marriage, you'll be too busy to perceive a threat in someone else's happiness. I can't help but think that those who pass judgement on other people's relationships do so because their own marriage is so miserable that it's easier to critique someone else than to deal with their own issues. If you want to safeguard the sanctity of marriage - start with your own.  I expect it will keep you busy for a long time to come. 

These days most of my writing begins with a Field Notes notebook.  As I have written previously on this blog, I carry one with me almost everywhere and use them to capture inspiration and ideas.  Eventually, those ideas need to be shared and that means they have to be transferred into a digital format.  After going through a writing "dry-spell" last summer and consequently re-architecting my entire writing process, I made a conscious choice to eschew high powered, feature-bloated word processors for a more simplified approach.  I wanted to focus my attention on the act of writing - getting the words and thoughts out of my head and into good form on the page and screen.  So many of the "features" found in Microsoft Word or Apple's Pages actually get in the way of that process.  I wanted something simpler.  

Early last summer, I started trying out a number of Mac text editors with the hopes that they would offer a solution to my problem.  I had several criteria that guided my search.  The right application for me would have to have: cloud sync to Dropbox, iPad and iPhone versions for writing and editing on the go, good typography, a full screen mode, word count, the ability to save files as plain text, and no floating palettes.  This led me to several choices: WriteRoom, Byword, PlainText, and iA Writer. A number of other text editors seemed to be either too complex (such as those designed for writing code) or too ugly to consider. 

While WriteRoom, PlainText and Byword are fine products, I settled on iA Writer for a number of reasons.  First, iA Writer has no preferences with which to fiddle.  On the Mac, you can choose to enter a full screen mode which hides all other open apps so that you can direct your attention to working on your current document or FocusMode which allows you to direct your attention to one sentence at a time in your open document.  Other than those two choices of writing modes, there are no other options.  Being something of perfectionist, I can easily detour off the task of writing and spend an inordinate amount of time selecting just the write font in which to write or tweaking the best background color for my writing environment.  With iA Writer you get one font and one background but this is not a problem as they are both perfect for my tastes. They not only work to minimize distraction, they work together to create an elegant writing environment.  

Like many of the other text editors, Writer has Dropbox support and was the first Mac/iOS writing app to integrate with Apple's iCloud. Regardless of which cloud platform you choose, syncing is seamless and error-free. This allows me to write in the same beautiful enviroment on each of the devices I use and access my current work wherever I am - home, office, or on the go.  

iA Writer's Mac and iOS versions are solid and reliable with almost identical capabilities. Indeed, I believe that Writer began its life as an iPad app and was later ported to the Mac.  What had been missing was an iPhone version and the developer filled that gap a couple of weeks ago with the release of an updated universal iOS version that provided support for the iPhone.  This was a generous move and one that is much appreciated.  Something that took a couple of days to sink in as I used Writer on my iPhone 4S, was the ability to use the voice dictation built into iOS 5 running on the 4S to dictate my thoughts directly into the app.  This has made capturing ideas and inspiration almost effortless.  When you combine that with Writer's flawless cloud syncing, you end up with a powerful tool to dictate your ideas into your phone and have them "magically" appear on your Mac.  And if you are fortunate enough to have a new iPad you can do the same thing because it also allows for voice dictation.  Whenever I dictate a document into my iPhone or iPad, I feel like I have stepped into the world of Star Trek where everyone talks to computers instead of typing. It is a wonderful taste of the future.

All of these things work together to create a writing environment that allows me to work wherever inspiration might strike. This is the best of Apple and third party software working together to make my life easier and better.

This gentleman learned the hard way that toggling an iPhone's ringer mute switch does just that - it silences the ringer and all other alert tones save one.  The exception is an alarm set to fire in the built in clock app. I almost learned this lesson the hard way myself not long after getting the original iPhone.  I was on my way into a funeral and had set my iPhone to mute well before entering the church but several feet from the sanctuary doors my iPhone started playing the scifi alarm tone.  I had the alarm set to go off each weekday to remind me to pick up my oldest son from school.  Because of the funeral, I had made arrangements for my wife to pick him up but the alarm was still set to go off.  Thankfully the alarm went off before the funeral and not during it, but my close encounter prompted me to research the behavior of the iPhone ringer mute switch and learn that alarms overide the mute setting.  Since that time, if I need to be absolutely sure that my phone is going to be silent, I either turn the phone completely off or disable all pending alarms in the clock app.

The New York Philharmonic incident set off an intense conversation among the iPhone faithful and Apple pundits.  Everyone was asking "what is the correct behavior of the iPhone ringer mute switch?"  The answers were varied and many of them were quite thoughtful and well articulated.  I particuarly appreciated posts by John Gruber, Andy Ihnatko, and Marco Arment.  All of them raise great points and arrive at valid conclusions regarding how and why Apple designed the iPhone ringer mute switch the way they did.  That said, the emphasis in most of the discussions I read or heard was on how Apple could have or should have designed the ringer mute switch.  This seems to place most of the responsibility back on Apple.

However, isn't it fair to examine our responsibility as users?  Shouldn't we know how to operate the devices we carry on a daily basis?  If we can't or won't take the responsibility to learn the essentials of their operation should we even be carrying them?  If my iphone alarm had gone of during that funeral I'm not sure I could have shifted the blame away from myself and onto Apple.  That would be like driving a convertable through a car wash with the top down and expecting someone else to get wet. I don't think angry funeral attendees would have welcomed a cry of "Don't blame me. It's the fault of those wacky Apple designers." They would have seen it as my fault.  They would have seen it as my responsibility to know how to operate my phone and to have the good sense to mute it given the setting I was in. To his credit, the gentleman whose iPhone alarm went off during the concert personally apologized to the conductor and the New York Philharmonic. He took responsibility for not knowing his phone well enough to prevent the disruption.  I wish I had heard more of this kind of reasoning in the excellent discussions of ringer mute switch design that followed the incident.  In the end, the buck stops with users - the people who buy the phones and carry them wherever they go.

Since my main goal in ordering Field Notes was to help me capture inspiration wherever it might strike, the size of the notebooks was appealing. Carrying one of these notebooks with you wherever you go is pretty easy as they are the perfect size to fit in a pocket of your pants. They are also neither too thin or too thick to sit comfortably in a back pocket.  The unpretentious covers are thick enough to be durable but pliable enough to mold to your pocket and develop some character as they wear. The paper is thick enough to hold up in daily use but not so thick as to feel harsh. Field Notes just feel good to carry around and touch.

The fact that they feel so good to the touch has something to do with the quality of their construction. They are a pleasure to use.  There is obvious attention to their crafting. First, they are printed and made in America.  I like that - especially in today's economy.  It maintains skills that our country shouldn't lose in the mad rush to make things as cheaply as possible through outsourcing.  The back cover of each notebook tells you what paper, ink and staples were used and where they were printed and put together.  This led me to look for more information on their website and there I found numerous well-produced videos detailing the printing processes of several of their special edition notebooks as well as the work that goes into their standard edition.  I like that each notebook has a back story. For some people a notebook may be just a notebook but for me quality thoughts deserve quality paper to give them shape and expression and these little notebooks deliver it. 

The convenience of having millions of songs at my fingertips for less than $10 a month is a welcome thing for a music lover on a budget who enjoys listening to lots of different kinds of music and exploring new artists. Spotify is going to revolutionize the way I locate, listen to and purchase music.  For example, I was out at lunch with some friends when a couple of songs I liked came across the restaurant's music speakers. Seconds later they were added to appropriate playlists on my iPhone Spotify app and were waiting for me in the Mac client when I returned home. 

By all accounts it took a lot of work and negotiation with record labels for Spotify to bring their excellent service to our shores.  I am thankful for all their hard work.  I think you will be too if you give it a chance.