The noise of the modern world makes us deaf to the voice of God, drowning out the one input we most need. I mean, how do we have any kind of spiritual life at all if we can’t pay attention longer than a goldfish? How do you pray, read the Scriptures, sit under a teaching at church, or rest well on the Sabbath when every chance you get, you reach for the dopamine dispenser that is your phone? To requote the Catholic father and social critic Ronald Rolheiser, “We…are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion.”
