Smart Rings for Sale
For under £350 you could be the owner of a smart ring which allows you to monitor your health continuously. Perhaps you are already the proud owner of such a device, or perhaps you could imagine nothing worse than further fitness screening!
A prominent member of the City Council was extolling the smart ring’s virtues, particularly the function that told him when he ought to be getting some rest. Rest is a vital component of healthy living, as important as exercise is. Too little for too long brings profound exhaustion.
When people ask me how Dean Catherine is enjoying her life in retirement in Ilkley, I reply that she says she is very happy and at present mainly catching up on her rest. She has written about so many good friends and colleagues in their sixties who now seem to be running on fumes.
The ancient story from the Book of Genesis, of God making the world in six days and resting on the seventh, holds great wisdom. Not only is the pattern hardwired into creation, but also it manifests in the writing itself. The first verse of Genesis comprises seven Hebrew words and twenty-eight – four times seven – letters. It could not be clearer that all creatures fit into a rhythm and pattern in which is found rest.
My clergy colleagues know that I am a rhythm fascist. When we say the items together in Cathedral worship, I expect an unhurried and unvarying rhythm. We do it – in my not-so-humble opinion – because in worship we are doing more than saying the words on the page; we are trying to enter the rest that these words offer us.
Sometimes the words themselves are quite hard to accept at face value as holy and wholesome. They can forcefully express the desire for revenge and retribution, for example. However, in saying text rhythmically, with space around the words, we allow them to speak at a different, deeper level – just as music-making is more than playing the notes in the right order.
With rest, even unpalatable cursings and condemnations can be received as words which point beyond themselves, as encouraging us to be totally honest in prayer, to offer our worst selves to our Creator along with our highest aspirations.
Perhaps the most important rest we can find is the rest of handing over our lives in faith. The reason I won’t be buying a smart ring is because in my hands, or on my finger, it would become another thing about Me, and I don’t want my Me to be about self-surveillance. I would prefer my most intimate mirror to be found in the face of the One who calls me Beloved.
Smart rings are not intrinsically bad; they may be valuable aids to health, but then so is prayer, in which we hand ourselves over in faith to Another, taking a break from making ourselves the project we ceaselessly plan to control. True rest lies beyond ourselves.