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July-September, 2013

Reboot!

by Rev. Barbara Goodman Siegel, O.M.C.

The other day, I turned my computer on and got a blank screen. My husband was gone and not being at all technical, I was at a loss as to what to do. I tried pushing the start button again and a message appeared on the screen asking if I wanted to run a “Trouble shooting” program. Not knowing where the program came from and being afraid of hackers, I thought I better not. I thought I pushed the cancel option, but the program started to run anyway. I pushed “Cancel” again and another message came up that said: “You can’t cancel this program once it has started.” As the program ran, a line kept moving across the screen and a note above it said: “This may take several minutes. It will not erase any personal files.” I must admit that the running of this program was causing me some anxiety, but I couldn’t see any way of stopping it.

About 20 minutes later, the program stopped and a message appeared that said: “This program could not fix the problem, will need to take it to a technician.” Then a window came up that gave me two options: “reboot or cancel”. I hit reboot. Then the message in the window said: “Are you sure you want to reboot?” I figured I couldn’t mess it up more than it was already messed up, so I pushed “Yes” and prayed: “Please let this fix it.” I watched as the normal icons came up on the screen, then it went to the same dark screen I had when the computer seemed broken. I just kept looking at the screen and praying. All of a sudden, things started happening and Internet came up. Everything was all right. I truly felt I had witnessed a miracle!

As I thought about what happened with the computer, I realized that it was a perfect allegory for life. A problem comes up, we feel overwhelmed, and we push what we think is the trouble shooting button, the button we call “mind.” Our programed responses start to run and the mind goes through all the solutions it can think of. Some anxiety occurs while it is running, but once started, we don’t seem to make the choice to turn the program off even though, unlike the computer program, we do have the power to cancel the “mind” program. When the mind is done running its program (which may even involve trying to implement some of its solutions) it (often) says: “I don’t know how to fix this, take it to a Higher Power.” 

Now we earnestly turn the problem over. We have thought of every solution our mind can give us and we have gotten nowhere. In desperation, we sit in prayer, quieting our mind and allowing Higher Power to take over. In other words, we “Reboot” and, in this place of surrender, a miracle happens. It may come as an unexpected phone call, a thought to do something we hadn’t thought of before, etc. Miracles come in many different packages. The trick, as I see it, is not to try to define how the miracle should show up, but to be awake enough to recognize it when it comes.

So what is most important here? I think it is to “Reboot” sooner! We don’t need to run the entire “mind” program first – the program that has us running with anxiety in non-productive circles. Instead, turn it over to Higher Power immediately. Higher Power certainly has much better “programs” then we do! And, after turning it over in prayer and in trust, listen and watch for the solution.

Computer Hope.com (yes, it is a real website) says: “Rebooting is sometimes necessary to recover from an error.” OK, I really can’t say it better than that.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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