Episode 38: Texture

In 1964 a father penned a bedtime story for his sons called Flat Stanley. In it, Stanley is flattened by a falling bulletin board which makes it possible for him to be sent through the postal service in an envelope to a friend in another state. He returns in a fresh new envelope full of stories about his time with friends. Strangely, this seems like such an apt description of what we've become socially. We flatten our voices into text messages, our movements into reels, our physical presence into sharable images and we send them to our "friends." We stopped calling this "connection" long ago and now call it flat-out-relationship.  And while much of this was absolutely necessary during a global pandemic, and while it remains vitally necessary for those with compromised immunities or health challenges, and while it definitely works for folks separated by geography and for teaching on a broad scale, haven't we taken the flat thing a bit too far? In the Lord, the relational world was never intended to be flat. Far from it. It was designed to have the texture of touch and voice and presence. How do we push through a culture that says flat is where it's at? Our mission story this month begins with the director of a Trial Academy Boot Camp lecturing young lawyers on the importance of texture in their interaction with a jury and we end with Flat Stanley sightings all over the world and beyond to the International Space Station.  Curious? We sure hope so. Join Kat Silverglate, founder of The Ridiculous Hour Foundation [Home of The Mobile Mission Project] for our February 2023 Mobile Mission Challenge. If you would like to receive the equipping piece discussed in this month's podcast, visit our mission page at www.theridiculoushour.com. We'd be thrilled to mail you one while supplies last. And if you'd like to sign up to take these monthly challenges, visit our sign up link on our home page at www.theridiculoushour.com. With gratitude to Shannon Alderman for her sound edits on this podcast. Her skill adds texture to the mission!