During a warm evening last summer, I was comfortably sitting in the plastic Adirondack chair in my front yard. My neighbor from down the street, John, came by and commented that I was practicing the lost art of “porch sitting”. Porch sitting, as John explained, means resting while watching the world go by and actively choosing to opt out. I like opting out, especially if there is a cold adult beverage involved.

Fast forward to tonight. I was reading a chapter in Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline, which is a book more or less about lost spiritual arts. After finishing the chapter my mind ran nostalgic, thinking about all of the things we don’t do anymore. We don’t porch sit anymore. We don’t talk over fences. We don’t “stop by” for coffee. We don’t “raise barns”. We don’t spin yarns. We don’t skip rocks. We don’t turn wrenches. I go to a church that doesn’t have an organ and we rarely sing hymns anymore. I remember the all-weekend affair of “putting up” fruits and vegetables, which required two aunts and a small family reunion.

Foster says that busy-ness isn’t of the devil, it is the devil. In my Aunt Marian’s home, they all used to sit around while the potatoes finished boiling and pass around sections of the newspaper. Mail was an adventure, especially when the letter had your name on it. Technology is supposed to simplify and streamline our lives, freeing up our time to enjoy life. Still, we spend hours pouring over e-mail and web page after web page of news and information. It would seem the phenomenal development of technology has done more to devour our time and isolate us from family than fulfill its promise of saving it.

So, if we really take stock in all we have and all we do – if we honestly examine what has become important to us – are we spending our time more wisely in the 21st century than we were in the 19th? Grab a lawn chair and sit in your front lawn while you contemplate the answer to that question.