I suspect this morning’s reflection might be a bit ramblingly obtuse. 

For years I’ve done research on an early American priest in the backcountry wilderness of Kentucky. I’ve collected reams of information, mostly from the archives of hand-written correspondence, between this priest and other priests, as well as with America’s first bishop, Rev. Mr. John Carroll. 

I once searched the newspaper archives to see if his name anywhere appeared, and sure enough the only place it did was in an occasional listing of early 19th century undelivered mail at the Lexington post office. As far as I could tell, this single letter, addressed to J. Thayer, was never retrieved, mailed by someone but never received. I wonder where it physically is now?

At night as I crawl into bed, I plug my iPhone in to recharge. But before I turn off the bedside light, I switch the phone into “airport mode”, so I’m not awakened by the dings of random incoming emails, messages, notifications, and especially unwanted junk or spam attacks. 

Then, the next morning when I eventually drag myself out of bed, I descend the stairs,  forcing myself through the nagging pain of aging knees, to the kitchen to make our first day’s pot of coffee. While it brews, I also awaken my iPhone, rescuing it from the constrain of “airport mode”, to peruse the assorted onslaught of yet unanswered emails, notifications, messages, advertisements, spam, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

This morning, as I performed this morning ritual, it struck me how radically different our lives have become—have evolved—just in the short decades you and I have walked this earth. In the sixties, when I was a teenager, our lives were not bombarded, or maybe I should say, with forced gratitude, “blessed” with this daily digital onslaught from friends and foes alike. 

As I sat, desperately awaiting the dang coffee to complete its cycle, I decided to do something I rarely do—I turned my iPhone completly off! There it now sat on my lap, black, seemingly dead. I tapped the screen and nothing! Where now are all those incoming messages? If I never again in my life turn on a “smart” phone or iPad or laptop, where do those messages go? 

Where are “they”? I’m certainly not a grammarian, but it struck me funny how we blindly use a plural personal pronoun to collectively address these digital, what? What are “they”? And where are “they”? Are they left on someone’s list somewhere in the world waiting to be received? They were sent, either by a living person or an automated program or a bot, but if I never receive “them”, do they exist at all? 

During the opening moments of a Catholic Mass, the priest leads the congregation through what’s called a short penitential act, which includes the Confiteor prayer. This prayer ends with the phrase, in Latin, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”, or in English, “Through my fault, my own fault, my most grievous fault.” When saying this, the confessor is to beat one’s chest three times, as a sign of humble remorse. 

When I became a Catholic, I had to learn this ritual, something I’d never done in my childhood Lutheran rituals, and certainly never did in my Congregationalist and Presbyterian phases. But what struck me as humorously puzzling is, as I was learning this new Catholic ritual, the old priest up front was saying something oddly different than what was written in the hymnal. He was saying, while pounding his chest, “Through my fault, my own fault, my most grievious fault!”

Grievious?! What does “grievious” mean?! There is no such word! And what really struck me funny was that the vast majority of the Catholics in the pews around me were repeating right along with him, “my most grievious fault” with great solemn intent! The rubrics spell out “grievous” quite clearly in the hymnals before them, but no matter, the priest says it, so it must be true. 

I know what a grievous fault is, for I’ve certainly been guilty of committing dare I say quite a few, but what the heck is a grievious fault?

How many things in our lives over the years have we just done, have we repeated, have we just mindlessly adopted, and become so accustomed to that we no longer question them as other than just life as we now live it?

And with my iPhone switched off, dead, where do all those messages go? Where are “they”? 

This world is becoming more and more grievious every day. Better get my coffee.