Spiritual Attentiveness

Wake up. Look. See!

To pay attention to life

Is to gain one’s life.

Attentiveness, humility, gratitude – these are but a few of the graced practices that help us address the challenges we inevitably encounter in our lives. In a series of blogs, we will take up these practices in paired “reflection” and “action” blogs. The reflection blog will describe the practice. The action blog will give guidelines on ways to bring the practice to daily life. Today we start the series with a reflection on Spiritual Attentiveness.

What, wisdom asks, do you get when you really pay attention to your life? A life! This suggests that life in its fullest is lived only as we pay attention to it. On the reverse side, it has been observed that that which we are unconscious of rules us. Our behavior is largely shaped by forces, dispositions, habits, beliefs, assumptions of which we are mostly unaware because they are so deeply embedded in our body, psyche, and spirit. We can sleep our way through life spurred and guided by such unconscious influences. But this need not be the case; we can wake up. The antidote to walking through life in our sleep is the practice of paying attention.

The Hebrew scriptures tell the story of Moses encountering a burning bush in the wilderness. When he sees the bush ablaze yet not consumed, he stops, turns, and pays attention. Elizabeth Barrett Browning captures this moment as only a poet can:

“Earth’s crammed with heaven / And every common bush afire with God, / But only he who sees takes off his shoes; / The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

I like to think that that bush was ablaze all day long, and many a traveler had passed by unseeing; only Moses was practiced enough in attending to see something more than a brightly lit bush.

But there is more to the story. It goes on to reveal that when Moses paid attention, he was instructed to take off his shoes – this was holy ground, after all; it is sacred space that we enter when we pay deep attention. Then Moses is addressed by a voice from the bush that ultimately leads to his calling to be the leader and former of a nation. The steps in this story are: stop / turn / attend / listen / and respond. Moses full life is revealed and turns on this experience, which depends on his paying attention.

The challenge for us is that paying attention in this deep way is hard work. It takes intention, an act of our will. And it is fraught with uncertainty and fear: What will we “hear”? Will it call for a response that we don’t want to make (Moses, indeed, argued vigorously with God about his calling). Will it dislodge us from our comfortable life (shepherding in Moses’ case)? Will we be safe afterwards? Will we be alone; who will accompany us? These are fundamental questions of life’s meaning, of safety, of belonging. Sometimes it is so much easier to stick with sleepwalking through life where these questions can be kept, we imagine, at bay.

For us to take the risk of paying attention we need to open ourselves in trust that this is what the journey of faith requires and that we come into the fullness of who we are and are meant to be only in this way. This is not a trust that we can gin up for ourselves. It must be uncovered, discovered, received, taken in. While life experience can sometimes undermine this process of trust building, it is when we attend to life more fully that it can generate, build, and sustain our trust. If we cannot find it readily within ourselves, the deep trust in Life we observe in others can help. Here too, paying attention (in this case to others) is a fruitful practice. Moreover, trust builds on trust, and if we step out in small ways, the results can make bigger steps possible. The underlying engine of this growth is the practice of paying attention and in doing that, responding as we are able.

Ultimately, our trust is in the “voice” we hear from the burning bush – in the “more,” the universe, a higher power, or the mystery we call God (or any of several other names). It is, at heart, a relationship. It is not just a “what” we are paying attention to, but more deeply a “who.” As we pay attention more and more to this “who,” we discover more and more the fullness of our own lives.

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