In the previous century, when there were only three (perhaps four) networks to choose from, on any evening at any hour, chances were high that you and your neighbors were watching the same TV show and the next day everyone would be talking about it. In any area there would be perhaps one radio station for each music genre. Remember the world before earbuds, when people spoke to each other as they walked by. There was a time when we had common points of reference.
Long before COVID-19, we made a choice. We chose to use the technology not to communicate but to isolate. We chose the familiar. We chose sameness.
In the first reading today we hear:
Woe to the city, rebellious and polluted, to the tyrannical city! She hears no voice, accepts no correction
It raises the question: how many of us have chosen to move into the tyrannical city, where we hear no voice that corrects, because we are not wrong? THEY ( the people who think differently) are wrong? They need to change. We hear no voice but our own, and the people who share and echo our voice, our opinions.
Ask yourself: when was the last time you truly allowed yourself to be corrected, heard information different from your current opinion and changed your mind (metanoia)?
The scriptures remind us that life should be a constant process of hearing, and allowing the voices we hear to correct us. This, of course, requires us to admit that we may be wrong.
Today, can we hear the other voices, can we open ourselves up to the possibility that we are wrong, can we be corrected?
