Letter No. 4: Reading the world closely

How to hallow your attention in a time of fragmentation.

I am looking for God in the doorway of this century home, in the cut of the corner and the way the wood grain interlocks the frame. I am looking for the unseen craftsman measuring for eternity. Did he take pride in his work, or hurrying the job, did he build it unthinkingly, unaware of its posterity?

I am looking for the unseen author writing temporality into being. I am reading the lines of the world as I would sentences in a book: here, my grandmother’s paper mache skin creases at her knuckles, there, the wooded lot near my childhood home is winnowed to a strip. Above me, Jupiter is rising beyond Venus. Beneath me, frogs and cicadas burrow awaiting spring.

I am looking for God in ordinary things.

This is not sacrilege or idolatry. I am closely reading the world as you would read a sacred text, committing its every word to memory, contemplating its meaning, hallowing its pages as an act of love.

“Love is the quality of attention we pay to things,” writes poet and polymath, J.D. McClatchy. And I believe him. We pay attention to what we love. And what we love changes us. This is the basis of the Platonic ascent—love changes its subject, the way reading a beloved novel changes its reader. Whether our attention is tuned to toadstools or technology, it has a formative effect.

The act of looking also transforms its object. In quantum mechanics, phenomena change when observed. Particles become waves. Waves become particles. Like an actor responding to his audience, their energy shifts. It seems to me that this might serve as a metaphor for the way our attention has the power to change things as well.

Try listening closely to someone speak, fully engaged and curious about what you might find, and let me know if they do not also shift before your eyes. I bet more times than not, they open, like a flower's petals in daylight. This is the power of paying attention.

The drinking glass I am using, no longer just a vessel for liquid, becomes a story of time under the intensity of my gaze. That water mark three-quarters of an inch from the rim speaks to the life this glass had before it touched my lips, and the life it will have after I leave this café. Which, if you think about it, might be one of the reasons why we would often rather not look. What we find might unsettle us. Sometimes, we would rather not see.

Sometimes, we would rather distract.

St. Augustine noted this human tendency toward distraction in the fourth and fifth centuries. He diagnosed the problem looking at his own life. Attempting to find what he longed for, he turned his attention to consumption and achievement, chasing pleasure, education, social status, and success and found himself unsatiated. Clouded by the lens of “lesser loves,” he found that his view of the world was blocked.¹

This rings true. Instead of seeing the world for what it is, in all its deep-down beauty and tragedy, we too often see it for what it can give us. Mistaking our social constructs for the real thing, we focus our attention on pleasure, distraction, status, and comfort and lose the thing in itself.

Philosopher and author Iris Murdoch calls our societal distractions and distorted views of the world “the veil.” That curtain cuts our looking from truly seeing. It shrouds our vision. The antidote for her is the experience of nature. Out of nowhere, a kestrel wings into frame drawing our attention back to the real. “There is nothing now but kestrel,” she writes. The raw truth of nature rends the veil, revealing reality as it is apart from our self-focused fixations.²

Sometimes, however, we are too far gone to see that kestrel swinging into sight.

To begin to see again requires a reorienting of our attention. Contemplative and priest Martin Laird offers the practice of meditation and silence. Beginning with a “prayer word” or phrase, the fragmented mind focuses not just on the evidences of life in nature but on the very source of life itself. Breathing in and out in prayer, the practitioner is led step-by-step away from distraction into peace and silence.³

The key word is “led.” Augustine found that his attempts to right his disoriented state resulted in failure. Like the first three steps in Alcoholics Anonymous, his breakthrough came when he accepted that striving could not gain him success. He found his attention only converted when he rested in that first Word undergirding all sights and sounds.

That Word, the one that spoke creation into being and moved over primordial waters, moves within us, too. It is a deep calling to deep.

The cost of not looking is steep. Not seeing will send you blankly into the unreal world of glowing screens, bank accounts, social striving, digital thrills, and instant gratification. This is the realm of consumption and dopamine hits.

It is the human-made light that drowns out the stars.

Reading closely rends that veil—and offers entry into another domain.

Here, a goose stand sentinel waiting for his flock as dark matter holds galaxies in place.

Here, a child pulls a parent to her cheek while her billions of cells divide and replicate.

Here, a river’s droplets catch immeasurable flecks of light as above that rippling mirror eternity stretches across the sky.

This is the real world. And it will go by in a flash. It will go by in the lifespan of a blink if we do not stop to read it closely, hallowing our attention. It is sacred thing.

Many blessings,

Rachel

1. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions.

2. Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good.

3. Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation.