Putting your phone on grayscale for Lent may seem like quite an unusual Lenten resolution. In fact, if we look back over 2,000 years of Christianity, I think we can be pretty certain that this particular Lenten resolution was not ever a popular voluntary Lenten penance. So we might ask ourselves why go grayscale, especially when it is not a traditional Lenten practice?
First of all, what are the traditional triad of Lenten penances?
Prayer- spending extra time in prayer or increased intensity in prayer, e.g. attending daily Mass during Lent, saying a Rosary daily, dedicating extra time for mental prayer, reading the Gospels using lectio divino, keeping a gratitude (to God) journal, etc.
Fasting- giving up those foods that we enjoy. Before the Lent of 1967, all Catholics practiced daily Lenten fasting with partial abstinence from meat, excepting Fridays, which were days of complete abstinence from meat. Voluntary fasting since 1967 has come to include many things, such as fasting from chocolate, snacks, meat, dairy, soda, alcohol, coffee, etc.
Almsgiving- dedicating additional funds toward the poor. Especially given a more simple Lenten menu, there should be extra money available to give to those in need. Almsgiving can include direct giving to the poor and beggars, as well as charitable giving to organizations dedicated to helping the poor. It can also include the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, such as visiting the imprisoned and clothing the naked.
Now, where might going grayscale on our phones fit into this schema? The answer is...everywhere! In his book, The Strangest Way, Bishop Robert Barron borrows the Buddhist idea of "monkey mind," to describe what sometimes happens when we begin to pray, placing ourselves in the presence of God. Even with the best of intentions and desires, our mind eagerly jumps from topic to topic, distracting us from the presence of God.
Smartphone usage is a sort of a training in monkey mind, an easy way of exacerbating a tendency that we already have. Jumping from app to app, from bright red circle notification to the next, scrolling quickly through a social media feed, or skimming news headlines and emails. There are a multitude of ways we use our phones - often to good purpose as an amazing tool - and yet, it feeds a sort of monkey mind, where conscious choice can be minimized as we follow the whims engineered by app designers who study how to distract us and employ those means to win our attention.
There are wonderful prayer apps that we can download to our phone...but, lovely and useful as they are, they nonetheless appear as one app among many. Even with dedication to a particular prayer practice, we can easily fall into a desire to get that breviary done so we can go back to FaceBook. Having a smartphone does not preclude having a good prayer life, but we must admit that facilitating and encouraging monkey mind through training ourselves with these screens can detract from and diminish the quality and quantity of our time in prayer. Going grayscale has been evaluated as increasing conscious choice, meaning we are ruled once again by our reason and not the drunken monkeys jumping around in our head. Those who advocate a grayscale phone setting claim that it also diminishes overall usage on the phone, which means the minutes available for prayer time increase.
Fasting from certain foods during Lent is also a way of increasing consciousness, of thinking more carefully about what we are consuming. It can help us to live more simply and be aware and appreciative of our resources. The bright colors of the screen are highly consumable, albeit not by our mouths and stomachs. Many of us have had that experience of having our attention drawn to the bright red notifications, feeling like we must click in order to get it erased. Push notifications draw our attention to breaking news, and we feel a desire to consume this news immediately. Fasting from food is a way of slowing us down, and so also is fasting from color. Our phones become less attractive and less consumable.
Almsgiving is a practice that ultimately has its root in seeing God in others, acknowledging the truth that when we give to others, we are giving to God and showing him our love. Many of us have had the experience of feeling ignored by others who are looking at their phones. Many of us have also had the experience of knowing that someone near us feels ignored because WE are looking at our phones! The attractiveness of entertainment or communication with others that we love can easily distract us from the people that surround us. It can prevent us from recognizing God in others and from identifying their needs. We can miss out on opportunities for the corporal and spiritual works of mercy because we are buried in what is happening on our screens. If going grayscale, combined with an intentional desire to be more present to those around us, can help us to decrease our overall phone usage, we can be more present to others, recognizing God's presence in them.
So, in short, while going grayscale on a phone is very new as a specific Lenten practice, it is nonetheless in continuity with the tradition of Lenten penances. The aim of the U.S. bishops in making Lenten penances voluntary in 1967 was precisely so that the faithful could identify penances that would be meaningful and appropriate to the current situation. Going grayscale is a great example of a penance that addresses the needs of our times.
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