Writer Jim McDermott, SJ, wonders:
whether our televisions contain a reservoir of grace just waiting to be discovered. The stories we choose, the characters we follow, the plot lines that affect us—they are not arbitrary. We watch what we watch, because on some level, it speaks to our hopes, fears, and needs.
Read the entire piece, “Finding God on a TV Screen.” What have you noticed when you take the time to pay attention to what you’re watching as entertainment, and why?
This piece, with its wonderful suggestion for a deeper encounter with television, is just in time for me. For decades I had no time to watch anything. After loss of a loved one, I invested in watching many of the shows that I had missed. Through the great gifts of current technology, full immersion (isn’t that swankier than “bingeing?) permits greater engagement with character (or plot, if that is your thing). I have grown to have a great affection for the works of David E. Kelley and Shonda Rhimes, each showing us, in quirky ways, facets of ourselves, our loves, our dilemmas. And I have been belatedly but greatly ministered to by the towering intellect and faltering humanity of Gregory House, M.D.
As a result of this article, I have been freed from the hidden shackles of shame that bound me to the notion that watching television is “doing nothing.” And now I have a means of engaging in an examen of sorts as I watch. Good news, indeed.