On this day, in the midst of the United States' aggressive landgrab called the Mexican War, was born the inventor of the telephone.
Today, Alexander Bell would rejoice that telephones can be turned off or switched over to answering machines so as to allow time for experiments, for family life, for loving, for addressing a crowded desktop, for prayer or for reflective living. Consider on this Lenten day the fruits of a regular discipline of fasting from responding to your telephone.