Dear reader,
Much is being said and written about attentiveness in this age of mobile phones and social media. Distractions abound. Even as I write this, looking up to watch the waves gently approach the shore and the sun sink lower in the sky, even with so much richness to hold my attention, I keep reaching for my phone. I need to exert a focused amount of willpower to resist doing so, to notice what’s in front of me and not let my mind race all over the earth.
As we start back to school, my thoughts are on attention: on the habits necessary for learning, and the importance of those habits in areas beyond school studies. A friend recently reminded me of a piece that I read last year, an essay by Simone Weil called “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God.” In it, Weil connects the habits of attentiveness and prayer, claiming that “prayer consists of attention...the quality of attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer.” The concentration—and the joy—that define diligence in one’s studies prepares one’s mind for the attentiveness needed for prayer. This is a kind of attentiveness that is neither fixated on finding the solution nor an exertion of “muscular effort.” Yes, Weil says, we must desire to find the right answer, but without pleasure and joy in the work, we will be only “poor caricatures of apprentices.”
With Weil on my mind, I’m thinking about the novel I’ve just finished: George Eliot’s beautiful Silas Marner. While Weil focuses on two subjects of our attention, God through prayer and our school studies, in Silas Marner we find two more—money, and others. Marner, set adrift by the betrayal of a friend, finds himself a loner in an unknown place, and as he settles down as a weaver, he begins to build attentiveness. This attentiveness, however, is misdirected: he is attentive to his money. Each evening, after he finishes the day’s labour and seals up his cottage, he brings out his money from its hiding place under bricks in the floor. With the utmost concentration and delight, he counts his coins, even bathing his hands in them and caressing them.
The trope of a miser in love with his money is a common one, and it does not take much imagination to guess how this attentiveness to his growing wealth deforms Marner. His “face and figure shrank and bent themselves into a constant mechanical relation to the objects of his life.” Even as his stacks of coins grow, Marner is impoverished.
But Marner is not beyond redemption, and his own comes after his money inexplicably vanishes, stolen without a trace, and an abandoned child stumbles onto his hearth. As he turns his attention away from his wealth to childrearing, Marner finds his life enlarged and enriched.
Marner’s story communicates the significance of attention—but not simply attention versus distraction. Instead, attentiveness is shown to be morally complex, as what we give our attention to matters just as much as our ability to attend to something at all.
And so I’m considering not simply whether I am attentive or distracted (although the latter is often the case). Another question must be asked: to what am I giving my attention?
Paul’s admonition “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Phil. 4:8) comes to mind. Here Paul does not command that we turn a blind eye to the evil and pain of the world—an interpretation that fails to accord with a cruciform faith. But this command reminds us that it matters what we give our attention to. Attentiveness alone is not the virtue; attentiveness to what is virtuous is.
We must intentionally give our attention to those things which most clearly demonstrate the character of our heavenly Father. What is it that we anticipate spending time on after a day’s labour? What is it that we delight to consider? Whatever those things are, they will shape us—or deform us, as the money did to Marner.
For many, much of our attention is given to the work that we undertake. In this painting, The Village Tailor by Dutch painter Albert Anker, I love the way that Anker illuminates the work of his subject, the intensity of his attention, through the dark background and the sharp definition of the subject. And I wonder: if what we attend to shapes us, then can we afford to reduce our conversations of work and vocation to simple questions of what is moral versus immoral work?
This month I have been savouring Natalie Carnes’ newest book Motherhood. Part memoir, part theological exploration, all with the themes and narrative of Augustine’s Confessions as her well to draw from—and to push against. Her reflections have both a depth and vulnerability that make her book a rare jewel among the many books on motherhood.
I’ve continued my study of beauty through Junius Johnson’s Father of Lights: a Theology of Beauty. I am intrigued by Johnson’s understanding of creatures as a means of contuition—of seeing God not in a way that leaves the creature behind, but that sees God because it sees the creature most truly as it is. Johnson’s writing is dense, and I’m sure I will return to reread much of this.
Johnson’s work has led me to another book, a collection of the works of Bonaventure. You may recall that I began reading The City of God many months ago now, and so you may rightly be wondering at my ability to finish a book written before the Reformation. I hope to prove those doubts baseless!
From In Praise of Boring Friendships: “An errand friendship cuts against the culture of striving and hustling that asks us to account for the usefulness of every moment of our time. Instead, it depends on leisure, on being able and willing to waste time. When a friend goes with you to pick up your library books, or to drop off your mail, you aren’t stepping into the role of hostess or entertainer. You simply are, and so is your friend, and it’s enough to enjoy each other’s company without working to prove your worth to each other.”
From The Journey of the Mind to God by Bonaventure: “Let us not believe that it is enough to read without unction, to speculate without devotion, to investigate without wonder, to observe without joy, to act without godly zeal, to know without love, to understand without humility, to strive without divine grace, or to reflect as a mirror without divinely inspired wisdom.”
Let me learn now, O Lord, to do this as naturally as the inhale and exhale of a single breath:
To breathe out sorrow, to breathe in joy.
To breathe out lament, to breathe in hope.
To breathe out pain, to breathe in comfort.
To breathe out sorrow, to breathe in joy.
In one hand I grasp the burden of my grief, while with the other I reach
for the hope of grief ’s redemption.
And here, between the tension of the two, between what was and what will be,
in the very is of now,
let my heart be surprised by, shaped by, warmed by, remade by,
the same joy that forever wells within and radiates from your heart, O God.
Amen.
From Liturgy for Embracing Both Joy & Sorrowby Douglas McKelvey
On the road with you,
Laura