Our church has asked us to fast for the first three weeks of October as we remember the anniversary of our church and look forward to what God will be doing in the coming year. They suggested a ‘Daniel’ fast of just water, fruits and vegetables or abstaining from something we like. I couldn’t really think of anything, since I wasn’t too excited about the fruits & vegetables only thing, then I thought about how I enjoy listening to my favorite radio station KCRW whenever I am in the car and the idea of turning my radio off briefly entered my mind…and then the thought passed, not terribly surprising.

Then last night, one of my friends told me that he was fasting dinners and also from listening to the radio when in the car. I was thinking, “Ok, so now God has told me this twice”, so if I don’t act on it, I’ll be like young Samuel who heard God’s voice, but didn’t realize it until the third time.

So this morning, as I started my incredibly long 15 minute commute to work, I tried turning off the radio, and realized how quiet it was, without the constant stream of information flowing into my ears, it was like, I had to actually think on my own. I reflected briefly on how this is really like what I was saying in my last post, that I need to create space to reflect and process life. Then after 5 minutes of that, my mind started to get flooded with work, and I figured that I would rather hold off those thoughts and the stress that come with them for a little while until I actually got into the office.

My plan now, we’ll see how long it lasts, is to start off each morning’s commute with the radio turned off so that I can reflect, process and pray for 5 minutes (or at least until I get onto the freeway, whichever comes first). Then on my way back home from work, I will turn off the radio once I get off the freeway for another 5 minutes so that I can start processing my day before I get back home. Hopefully, this will help me to create a buffer between work and home in which I can consciously make the transition in between without simply allowing it to happen.

Oh yeah, as to the title of this post, when I went to turn off my radio, I saw that my radio doesn’t actually turn off when I press the power button, it just mutes with the following symbol displayed:

I noticed this before, but didn’t really make an impression on me at the time, since I so rarely turn off my radio. Anyways, I just thought it was an interesting metaphor on our lives today where we are constantly bombarded with information from all channels of our lives to the point where we can’t shut it off, and all we can do is just try and mute some of it so that we can hear ourselves think.