What the Phone Does to the Body

The Sunday after my first sermon in twelve months, I pulled over on the side of the road. Not because something was wrong with the car. Because the comments were coming in too fast to ignore and I was driving.

A Facebook thread had turned into a dogpile. Someone disagreed with something I had said from the pulpit. Then someone else disagreed with the first person. Then a third person corrected all of them. It was escalating and I was watching it happen on my phone screen while moving at fifty miles an hour.

Then Wade called. Wade Allen is the kind of friend who calls at the right time. I pulled over and answered.

He did not fix the thread. He just talked. And at some point in the conversation I noticed that my chest had changed. My breath was different. I had been in a state I could not feel from the inside because I was inside it — and the call had moved me out of it.

This is what the phone does to the body. Not just to the mind. The body.

The nervous system does not know the difference between a physical threat and an aggressive comment on a post. It responds to both the same way — the same hormones, the same physical preparation for fight or flight, the same heightened state that was designed for actual survival situations and is now being triggered by a stranger's opinion about a sermon.

You cannot think your way out of this state. The body does not respond to reasoning when it is already in response mode. You have to move through the state with the body.

This is what the contemplative traditions have always known: the breath is not a metaphor. Silence is not a spiritual abstraction. Walking is not just exercise. These are practices that work through the body because the body is where formation happens.

I have been calling what I do when I get off the phone a practice. Not because it is sophisticated. Because it is intentional. I step outside. I breathe. I walk a block. I let the body come back to itself before I let myself back online.

The phone is not going anywhere. Neither is the thread. But you are not the thread.

You are the body that pulled over. Start there.

Matt Headley

Founding pastor of Ecclesia Community. Ordained United Methodist. Flower farmer. Builder. I walk with a limp. That is why I can walk with you.

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