Here's a helpful talk that urges us to consider ways we can learn to engage technology responsibly. Just because cell phones and the internet makes just about anything available to us at any time doesn't mean we're obligated to stay wired 24 hours a day. But many of us do, as some of these humorous (and alarming) examples make clear.

If we're unconscious and out of control (or being controlled because we're unconscious), we never fully present where we are. This is partial definition of insanity.

In his blog about this video talk and its relation to the teaching of Jon Kabat-Zinn, Trent Gilliss comments:

"Kabat-Zinn describes a person viewing a sunset. Instead of simply taking it in, he says, we either are thinking about how we might write about it (or perhaps tweet or blog it), or, that certain somebody standing next to you actually has to gab away and tell you how gorgeous it is — which completely removes you from the moment of recognition and contemplation. In other words, we have this compulsion to do something with the moment in order to make it meaningful. We are not being mindful."

Prayer is life. But we''ll never meet up with God if we're not really living it.