Distraction is not a virtue!

Theologian Jan Walgrave commented that our present age constitutes a virtual conspiracy against the interior life. That is a gentle way of saying that, within our culture, distraction is normal, prayer and solitude are not. There is little that is contemplative within our culture and within our lives.

Why is this? We are not, by choice or ideology, a culture set against solitude, interiority and prayer. Nor are we, in my opinion, more malicious, pagan or afraid of interiority than past ages. Where we differ from the past is not so much in badness as in busyness, in hurriedness. We do not think contemplatively because we never quite get around to it.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 125