The High Cost of Easy: are we losing the ability—and the will—to do the hard work of real connection?

First: thanks to ChatGPT for giving me the title of this article. Thanks, ChatGPT! You’re so great, so nice, so freaking… Easy.

The natural world we are born into is just hard. Everything we need to flourish takes so much dang work. When Adam and Eve picked the fatal fruit they ushered in an era of hard, hard work, according to the biblical story of our origins and explanation of the challenging reality we face every day. Nothing would come easily- food or relationships or health or satisfaction. Weeds and thorns would abound, and provisions for our needs could only come from the sweat of our brows.

Our brilliant human minds have spent our entire existence trying to overcome this hard-ness. And I wonder, as technology makes things easier and easier- have we grown less able to put in the work to attain what really satisfies?

I’m thinking specifically right now of the internet age and the dawning of the AI era we find ourselves in, and relationships with other humans,

In a New York Times essay by Rachel Drucker, “Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back.” she notices how women seem to be retaining the desire to be together in person but men are disappearing from the social world. She recounts dinners out with a noticeable lack of men and women on dates together. The women are there socializing, but where are the men? I haven’t personally spent enough time looking around at other people restaurants to be able to agree or disagree with her observations, and what I am exploring today is an idea that applies more broadly than just to the heterosexual male. Drucker formerly worked on the business side of the online pornography industry so she brings an interesting perspective that I think applies far more broadly than she explores here in the context of the heterosexual male. 

 I came to understand, in exact terms, what cues tempt the average 18-to-36-year-old cis heterosexual man. What drew him in. What kept him coming back. It wasn’t intimacy. It wasn’t mutuality. It was access to simulation — clean, fast and frictionless.

In that world, there’s no need for conversation. No effort. No curiosity. No reciprocity. No one’s feelings to consider, no vulnerability to navigate. Just a closed loop of consumption.

What struck me most wasn’t the extremity of the content; it was the emotional vacancy behind it. The drift. The way many men had quietly withdrawn from intimacy and vulnerability. Not with violence or resistance, but with indifference.   

They weren’t sitting across from someone on a Saturday night, trying to connect. They were scrolling. Dabbling. Disappearing behind firewalls, filters and curated personas. And while they disappeared, women continued to gather. To tend. To notice who wasn’t arriving — and to show up anyway.

This morning my husband was describing to me the mental shenanigans that assaulted him at 3:30 am regarding a coworker who is hard to work and communicate with. Our conversation then turned to his contemplations about AI and the future and a fascinating conversation about it that he had with a chatbot yesterday that overall left him with more concerns than he started with.

People are hard. Communicating with other people is hard. Not knowing what someone is thinking as you are conversing with them, not being able to clearly articulate what you think, feel, and want to say, conflicting viewpoints, not feeling listened to or appreciated and valued, trying to craft your words so the other person will hear it in the intended spirit- all these things are so, so exhausting. Work. And the internet/social media world is so alluring. I want to retreat where no one will bother me, scroll, make snappy comments on friends posts, read the interesting articles that catch my eye and watch the animal reels.

ChatGPT has its pitfalls and hallucinations and energy use concerns but despite those things I keep feeling myself drawn back because of the ease of answers. It’s less work than googling. I have a simple question and I want a quick answer and it’s easier than wading through a page of search results. I just saved one minute and 45 seconds, hurrah. And the age of google saved me the trouble of walking to the library or trying to think of someone I knew that might know and calling them up and asking them. And what have I saved all this time for? My screen use statistics suggest I have saved it to fritter it away… scrolling, commenting, and watching animal reels

AI chatbots have another handy advantage. They are always there, ready to talk about anything, there are no feelings involved. You can have a pretty in-depth discussion it about anything you want to know. You don’t have to consider whether it’s busy or feeling like talking right now or if the expression on its face suggests openness or hostility. It answers right away and you aren’t left wondering during a long silence if it’s just thinking or you said something that offended it. It doesn’t bother you with its tone or make you wonder if it is implying something personal with its answer.

Do you see where I am going with all this? We have just been handed a new technology on a golden platter that draws us even further down the path of temptation to withdraw from each other into an easy existence that also makes us miserable and lonely because we were made for each other. We used to have no choice. Work through your differences and work together or you will probably die because it takes more than one person to do the hard work of living and getting all you need to live. Living required doing all kinds of hard things every single day and asking for help a lot. Now we can escape most of that and I think it is likely that we are losing the skills to do those hard relational things that take years and years of  practice and maturing and tears and joy. If our kids grow up in this easy online world with no experience persevering through the work it takes to have a relationship with another human, I can’t see much dating, marriage, or raising another generation happening, right? It’s grim prospects for humanity.

I don’t have answers. I don’t know whether humans will adjust and thrive to this new world or implode into a bleak dystopia. I just know that for me it takes a daily hard pull to not spend so much time in the land of online ease whenever I have a break, where my mind and attention start dissolving and I feel my thinking skills atrophying. I have to keep thinking about these things to have any hope of being who I want to be, which is a person engaged with other people in reality, engaged with my children, showing them it’s worth it to be with other people, that doing hard things can be much more rewarding than doing easy things. 

Figuring out Lent- it’s not so bad, actually.

Picture my grandfather took from the shore in 1936- possibly of the ship coming into harbor of Bremerhaven that he was about to get on to to go back to his new home country, the USA. He had been on a visit home to see his dying mother for the last time. You can see the dark clouds of war on the horizon.

I’ve written a few pieces over at kirstiemacleod.substack.com if you’d like to check them out. I’m not sure I will be continuing to publish there, I’m awfully fond of my little writing nook over here. There are no ads, tempting reels and random posts to distract me while I’m working, and since the comments don’t work, ye trolls who don’t know me can’t leave their thoughts lying around.

It’s Sunday morning and I’m not feeling my best so I just watched church online, in my pajamas, with dogs at my side and coffee in hand, reminding me of covid shutdown days. I’m thankful that church can be streaming now for the days we can’t be there in person or for those that are homebound. 

The season of Lent has begun. Lent has always been more of a concept than a practice for me. Before we joined an Anglican Church, Lent just wasn’t a huge part of the church year- yes, it was there, but didn’t have the same kind of focus. All in all, outside of Advent, Christmas and Easter, in churches we were a part of in other places we’ve lived, there wasn’t much focus on the traditional seasons and practices of the church calendar. It’s something I’m getting used to and learning to appreciate- the annual spiraling and coming back to certain themes, and getting deeper understanding as we revisit them again and again- but each time we’ve all aged a year and are in new life circumstances. The world is in a different place. I think I feel that much more so, this year, in March 2025.

I take comfort in the fact that that as the wise writer said in Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” The disasters, politics, wars, empires, plagues- humans have been through the same thing over and over and over. The human world seems to have its own cyclical calendar of seasons in the rising and falling empires and all the misery that comes in between. Why do I take comfort in this? Because it means that others have gone before us. There is also a rich cycle of humans responding by caring for each other, building community, depending on each other, bonding together and seeking justice, goodness, kindness, and love in response to darkness. And they have left riches for us to mine. We can rightly hate the evil and darkness stalking the world, and get our “revenge” on it by letting God reach deep inside of us and use these circumstances to form us into people filled with light. We can look at what our brothers and sisters left behind as waypoints to guide us on this path. 

One of these waypoints is Lent. An image that our priest used in his sermon this morning was that of us being battered, broken ships that have been through violent storms of the soul, docking our ships in Jesus’ safe harbor. 

I love this image and it puts Lent into a new light for me. The various practices of Lent- fasting, giving something up, etc- are things I have never really done much. And the whole time we’ve been going to this church, where Lent is a “thing,” I’ve been living a very hard season of loss. Losing my mom figuratively and literally. Last Lent was one of tears every single day, knowing that the long, painful journey my mom was on was coming to its end. It has felt like my life of the last seven years or so has been 24-7 Lent, as I understood it, and I certainly didn’t see how giving up chocolate or coffee or some such on top of everything else was a going to be good idea.

But this year, a new concept of Lent as a deep season of mercy is wiggling into my mind. We are not very good and stopping and paying real, sustained, reflective attention to our souls. And some of us are frankly scared to. We are scared of the feelings we are sure will bubble up. Guilt over the reminders of the ways we are not living up to who we want to be, the good we want to do but don’t (mostly for the very stupid reason that we are staring at a screen, mesmerized, zoned out by candy content that we know is rotting our brain and attention but seems to glue us to the sofa). I’m sure you have your own list of the things you know you would feel guilty about if you stopped to think about it, and then there is the welling up of shame that follows and the tendency to reach for distraction when such unpleasant feelings arrive, and bam- that’s the end of that time of self-reflection.

But what if Lent is a safe harbor for those feelings? What if there is Someone waiting to come on board, not to inspect and condemn, but to bring healing salve and restoration? Maybe Lent is about realizing and admitting that if we are honest we are broken by things we have both done on purpose and things we have just let happen, been sucked into without raising resistance even though we instinctively know it’s not good for us or others. Realizing that the evil that has happened to us has created angry, bitter places that are growing and taking over our lives. Or maybe it’s not anger, but fear, shame, or self-loathing.  

There is another reason that I personally struggle with self-examination, though, that any fellow sufferers with OCD will recognize- the tendency to examine self  with a fine-toothed comb and scrutinize my inner world with a microscope. To easily get sucked into to a cycle where I am worried I am not thinking rightly about myself, and accuse myself of letting myself off the hook too easily. I get trapped in a room with a repetitive assault of thoughts about whether something is bad or not, I don’t think it is, but OCD thinks so, and accuses me of indulging in self-justification, and we go round and round about this, and I can’t see clearly at all whether this thing really is or isn’t good for me, good or bad. I can’t get any clarity once that starts up. 

I need Jesus-examination, not self-examination.

In other words, if this ship docks in His harbor for repairs, I have to give complete control of it over to Him. I can NOT be put in charge of my own inspection. I didn’t build this ship and despite the fact that I have lived in it for 46 years I still seem to have a very poor knowledge about its inner workings and zero knowledge of boiler room engineering. All I know is I’m full of holes and problems and it’s very dark below deck and my flashlight’s batteries are so low I can barely see anything. Someone has to come in with floodlights and far superior wisdom and capabilities.

During communion one of the songs was Jesus, Strong and Kind. I’ll end with the lyrics, which say all the things I most deeply want to say about the assurance that docking in His harbor is safe. It’s going to be okay.

Verse 1
Jesus said
That if I thirst
I should come to him
No one else can satisfy
I should come to him

Verse 2
Jesus said
If I am weak
I should come to him
No one else can be my strength
I should come to him

Chorus
For the Lord is good and faithful
He will keep us day and night
We can always run to Jesus
Jesus, strong and kind

Verse 3
Jesus said
That if I fear
I should come to him
No one else can be my shield
I should come to him

Chorus
For the Lord is good and faithful
He will keep us day and night
We can always run to Jesus
Jesus, strong and kind

Verse 4
Jesus said if I am lost
He will come to me
And he showed me on that cross
He will come to me

Chorus
For the Lord is good and faithful
He will keep us day and night
We can always run to Jesus
Jesus, strong and kind

Carolina February

 

Warm sun, cold air on the face

Blue sky, scudding clouds

Wind in the pines

Swaths of sky-eyed speedwell

Vibrant tiny blue gems set in the green grass

Rows of leeks, pulled into piles

Rich earth.

Which apple branch to prune?

Craning necks, handsaws, clippers, ladders

Gnarled branches, fire blight, leaf buds, lichen.

Red-shouldered hawk cries above

Crows call from high bare branches.

Spring peepers have begun their piping,

Unaware of winter’s looming return

on Wednesday’s horizon.

January Poem

Despite all the nonsense of now

I still have joy.
Despair, anger, wanting to hide-yes.
But here I am, with joy.
A hawk is loudly hunting his breakfast 
nuthatches hop down the damp fissure
on the shady side of the the maple trunk
just outside the window.
Bright morning winter sun travels
past blue sky and bare tree limbs 
lands on aloe, cacti,
geraniums, the unfinished wildflower puzzle.
The keyboard where Bach Invention No. 1
is open and waiting
for my fingers to practice seven sixteenth notes 
four eighths, right hand, left hand, again and again.
Gentle dog snores from nestled balls of black fur 
the clacking of keys, furrowed brow, hand stroking beard- how lucky I am that my husband is working from home, saying, “you can have the last cup”
of coffee in the french press.

Learning to be 46, interrupted by a titmouse

Upside-down titmouse says “hi!”

I am 46. That feels very weird. But I can't dispute it and I don't really want to. Maybe when I am 80 I will look back at this post and think "what an innocent young chicken I was then... and I probably am. But I feel changed in my bones, these last few years. They have been hard, sad, joyful, full of life and death years. My roots are growing deeper, searching for the streams deep underground to sustain me. I am leaning in instead of running away. I am more whole, finding pieces of myself back on the old paths where I tried to discard them in frustration and self-disgust and fury, parts of myself I didn't want and hurled into the woods hoping the passage of time would cover them with leaves and debris until they were just gone. No. as soon as I went looking, there they were, waiting for me, to be picked up and held tenderly. They are mine, and I shall learn to treasure these rejected pieces of me and let them grow in to my wholeness.

Today I woke up and didn't want to feel the way I felt. I wanted to feel happier and began a mental self-motivating routine when I stopped- and let myself be. It's okay for me to feel this non-happy feeling. If Jesus appeared in front of me the first thing I would do was cry, I think. Cry for hours, days, weeks. He is like the mom who comes to pick up the child from daycare who held it in all day and looked fine on the outside and completely falls apart with mom, who is safe. Yes, I would cry and cry and cry until all the crying was done, and then- "I will every tear from your eyes. We will do it together. One by one until they are all dry." 

I walk with my father and let him cry. Impulses to try to ward off the tears jump through my nervous system and I take a deep breath and remind myself there is no need to do that. It is okay to just let him feel what he feels until he doesn't need to feel that thing anymore. Just let myself be who I am- and allow him to be who he is, in this moment, right now. We are walking in strange, uncharted territory, this place where my mom no longer walks beside us, where she will not come. We can only go toward her, but each day and hour is closer when we will take the same path we saw her take with joy on her face. I think about that moment, the second time in my life I saw someone see that door into heavenly places open. The expression of pure delight, looking beyond this world, to a place our hearts ache to be when we catch the smell of it on the wind. 

I know that taking a walk with my father is a thing I will only be able to do for so long. That is a strange place to be. Existing in this in between, turned-upside down place of grief and joy that I know is only temporary, but a temporary that could last until tonight or a decade from now. 

I constantly have to allow myself to exist here and now, in this season where everything is changing and unfamiliar. The role I have held for the last 19+ years as a mother and adult daughter is changing. I am on a train where the scenery outside is transitioning to something very different and it makes me nervous. I find myself scanning the horizon of my acquaintances for older women who have been here already and might help orient me. Hah! A tufted titmouse interrupts the flow here by landing above my living room window and looking in at me upside down, this way and that. Then he flies around the corner to the other window and sits on the back of a deck chair and looks in from that angle. What is this place where the humans and dog beasts are gathered? He zips away and then lands again on an overhanging branch with a seed to eat while he observes our ways. I’d probably feel a lot better if I stopped sitting here scrunched up drinking coffee and went outside into the crisp air and observed his world for a while, briskly exerting myself in the process. In other words, a walk. Good day, sirs and mesdames, I must be off.

Waking up to the new President-Elect

 It’s a strange morning to wake up to such a divided nation that believes either it’s on the cusp of the golden age or the end of all things. 

I still believe God is good no matter what is happening in our bombed-out world obsessed with power and dominance. That’s the way the world works. We yearn for something different and yet we continue to participate in its ways.

Probably the thing I personally hate the most is when Jesus is used as a tool and his ways distorted to create a political Jesus. I don’t know Political Jesus. I don’t want to know Political Jesus. I want to run from him as far as possible. Political Jesus espouses everything opposite from the real Jesus. Political Jesus makes me want to run screaming and throw up. 

When God came to earth as a man, He chose poverty, small insignificant people, and actively resisted those who wanted to make him a political king. He invited people into a new way, offering to plant a seed of transforming love in their hearts that would grow into magnificent tree drooping with delicious fruit:

-Love for enemies, real love that seeks to understand, reach across dividing lines, heal wounds, love so powerful that it would die for this enemy.

-Desire to serve and come alongside people instead of trying to manipulate and control and use them.

-Willingness to accept grievous wounds and refusal to retaliate and take an eye for an eye.

-Hearts full of compassion for all the humans they see, especially the struggling outsiders, the poor, the foreign, the powerless.

If someone says they know Jesus and you don’t see those fruits growing in their lives (maybe slowly, maybe haphazardly!), they probably haven’t met the real Jesus. The seed He plants is a real seed that really transforms utterly.

I haven’t seen those fruits in the man we now call president. The vision of a powerful Christianity he offers is another version of Political Jesus. I’m not buying it. I’m not buying the idea that waking up to President Harris would save everyone either even if I personally would feel far more comfortable having coffee with her than Donald Trump. The world is going to keep on world-ing and thinking political power is the means to happiness. Jesus did not storm the halls of Rome and take the emperor’s seat. He had far more important things to do with people the empire laughed at and scorned. The Kingdom that He came to establish grows in hearts, not in seats of government, even if we dearly pray that those with the Seed in their hearts will sit in the seats of power. While it occasionally happens, doesn’t seem to be the norm. You’ll far more likely find a person with that Seed in their hearts doing normal or lowly and unglamorous things because such people tend to abhor power and do anything they can to stay away from it.

However, there is one thing I can do-  I‘m praying for all the people who have lost hope today and are living in fear and despair, that the Voice of beautiful peace that transcends world and politics will beckon their hearts into its rest. I’m praying for all those celebrating victory and imagining all America’s troubles are over today to hear the Voice that says His ways are not our ways, and that the only time He met with a king on earth was forced, where he was mocked and sent off for execution. And I will pray for our new president, too, that his heart hears the Voice, that he lets that Voice plant the transforming seed in his heart. Can you imagine what a shocking and crazy and beautiful thing that would be, if he suddenly became humble and loving and wildly compassionate and wise and discerning and loved his enemies? Let it be so, Lord. 

A Christian Manifesto for the 4th, Love Me

 

It’s the Fourth of July, and I would like to muse on the concept of freedom and living together in a free country. 

As most of you know, I am a passionate Christian and Jesus is the most important person in my life. I seek to think and act and love in alignment with who he is. 

However, as a Christian, I just don’t subscribe to the various “Christian” political movements that would like me to side with them in trying to create a more supposedly Christian culture via political means. While our country was indeed based on Judeo-Christian values, I don’t want to live in a “Christian” country or try to create some sort of theocracy. I want to live in a country where people feel completely safe, free and comfortable to live according to their own beliefs and philosophies even if my personal opinion of those beliefs and philosophies is that they are crazy or false or don’t align morally with my beliefs about the kind of lives God desires us to pursue in order to flourish and know him. We need basic laws that protect this state of things no matter who is in power. If your right to live as you see fit is not protected, then neither is mine, for surely the wheel will turn again and who is on top now will be on the bottom later.

Following Jesus wholeheartedly means embracing a lot of uncertainty and accepting that many of the things we read in the Bible are hard to understand and can be interpreted many different ways and that the New Testament especially is not a law book for structuring society, but a guide on how to profoundly and sacrificially love the people around us, no matter how vastly they differ from us.  The “Christian” movements that I see so vigorously trying to seize power right now out of fear that our country is going the “wrong” way- I don’t see anything about them that make me think they are about sacrificially and profoundly loving our neighbors at great personal cost to ourselves. That is the core of the gospel, the truth that all things lead back to in the Bible and the very foundation of who God is.

It’s not that I don’t think Christians should be involved in politics, it’s just that when we are, I think we need to consider the well-being of everyone in the country and not just whoever elected us. There’s lots of issues I am passionate about because they affect all of us. I think everybody has the right to clean air and clean water and corporations absolutely do not have a right to pollute the air and water and land that everyone needs for their basic existence. I am passionate about finding ways to compassionately protect the lives of the most vulnerable among us- from embryos and their extremely valuable mothers, through the whole life cycle, all the way to the very end of life to a person who doesn’t even know who they are anymore. I am interested in working on finding common ground with people who have vastly differing opinions on these complex matters and trying to find agreeable solutions. I want to build connections of trust and love with people who are really scared that my “Christian values” will literally harm them or kill them.  

There is so much more I could say. I rarely get involved in political conversations on social media or make comments about people’s memes and posts that just make fun of the other side. In fact, when I am tempted to, I feel a literal sense of a divine slap on the fingers… “nope, not where I’m calling you, Kirstie.” 

Even though opening the news is a bit terrifying, the state of the world is dreadful and this whole election is like a deadly circus, I’m not afraid. I believe God continues to work and fulfill his purposes, no matter who is in power. It’s the paradox at work that sometimes when things are the very worst the very best things happen, and sometimes it’s the very worst things that turn us into the best people.  Also, you know what? No matter what the national and international stage looks like, I know so many incredibly amazing people that just keep doing their thing day and day out, loving the people around them, serving in extremely hard places, having compassionate conversations with their “enemies,” seeking peace, heading right back into the fray even after they have been hurt and offended, criticized, and condemned, ready to love some more. 

I’ll end with a few examples.

My parents’ physician, Dr Todd Granger, who has cared for them in their season of great need better than any doctor I have ever known, with extreme integrity and attention any hours of the day or night, who still makes house calls when necessary, and at prices that are definitely not making him rich.

Jeremy Courtney, founder of Humanite, and the local teams bringing relief to people in the hardest places that are being bombed and terrorized, no matter what their political alliances are. These folks keep going back despite being bombed, shot at, threatened, and even killed.

The good people of my church, Holy Trinity Anglican, working together to serve the hungry of our community with our food pantry, and growing fresh produce in our giving garden. Welcoming anybody who walks in the door. Building relationships with and honoring the civil rights heroes of our town. Doing so many good things secretly behind the scenes that greatly cheer my heart when I find out about them!

A random new friend I made recently sitting at an advertising table outside her place of employment who just radiates friendliness and love, and I have since learned is exactly the kind of person that is ready to jump up and help you with whatever you could possibly need… despite growing up experiencing tremendous abuse, cruelty and trauma. 

My mom, who died last month, and remains the most inspirational human in my life, who loved lavishly, built friendships across many political, religious and economic lines, brought countless “different“ people into our home (foreign, needy, elderly, lonely, outcast, socially awkward), volunteered relentlessly in soup kitchens and programs helping the homeless find housing, programs serving kids and school teachers in Haiti, sponsoring children with World Vision and keeping up a robust correspondence with them, defending anyone she sensed was being bullied or mistreated. Who kept doing all of these things despite bad experiences with some people who tried to take advantage of her good heart. She kept going back into the loving battle… even when she had Alzheimer’s she displayed this kind of love in the midst of great personal suffering. Love was her default setting, a profound gift from the God she loved with all her heart.

This post may have wandered all around and i could write and write for hours about the people around me who shore up my hope in God’s goodness but I think I’m done for now. Take heart, there is much love in the world and light always prevails over darkness, no matter what the news is telling us or what new evil the world tyrants are plotting. Blessings to you on this 4th of July!