One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot is how often I have something in my earballs. Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascentra Presents, always listening to a podcast. I'm listening to YouTube stuff. I'm listening to audiobooks. Don't even get me started on audiobooks. Or vacuuming, get the AirPods in and just like listen to something. Or my gosh, I find myself even bringing AirPods into the chapel to have prayer. Why? Because I love

listening to the Ascension app. Sorry, this sounds like a commercial, but it's not really commercial.

Here's one of my things. I listen to the Bible in the air. I listen to it at 1.5 speed or 2-time

speed because people typically don't like the sound of their own voice. So I am like, most people

I typically don't like the sound of my own voice. But if I listen at 1.5 speed or two times speed, then I can pretend it's someone else. I'm always listening to something. I don't want to say it's an addiction because that's a loose use of a technical term. I would say it's kind of a compulsion though. I would say that it's kind of a thing that I find myself leaning on. The point is this, and maybe you're like me, right, where you realize I'm always

listening to someone. the thing that I find myself leaning on. The point is this, and maybe you're like me, right,

where you realize I'm always listening to something and the invitation to enter into silence.

I have not RSVPed to the invitation to enter into silence. The main thing is I want to know more.

For me, it's always like, I always think there's something else out there that I want to grasp.

I love engaging with new ideas, but here's the problem.

I can have a knowledge of something that is a mile wide and an inch deep.

What happens is I'm always going on to the next thing without going deeply into one thing.

On the positive side, the great thing about listening to something all the time

because you want to learn more, want to be engaged by big ideas, is that you get engaged by big

ideas. Awesome. It's a mile wide. The negative side is unless I press stop and then think about what

I've heard, it's only an inch deep. If I keep inputting other people's ideas, other people's voices,

other people's thoughts into my brain, oftentimes I end up not knowing what it is, I think.

This doesn't just have to do with podcasts or YouTube channels or audiobooks. This is even song lyrics. How many

times have you arrived in the course of a day had the song lyric running through our brain?

And if we stopped and paused and just attended to it, they're like, wait, why do I want

those words in my brain? If you're listening to something as uplifting, something that you actually

have discerned already, this helps me focus my thoughts. This help. This is actually what I want to think. Say, for example, some kind of song that praises God or some kind of song that reminds you of the goodness of the world, the goodness of people, like a song that you know, you've already thought about it and you know it's true, that makes sense.

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