Father Laurence Freeman in Sources
of Wisdom quotes William James, psychologist and philosopher, who said,
‘Reality is where you place your attention.’ Attention matters, writes Fr Laurence. The loss of our capacity to pay attention (our distracted culture, the fact that we
spend an average of three or four hours on our mobile devices every day, young
people are spending at a very vulnerable age, hours, hours and hours on their
social media) this is a fragmentation of our fundamental capacity which is
attention: to be able to listen, to be able to observe, to be able to engage,
to feel empathy, to see the wonder of the world in which we live and the
relationships in which we are connected. Attention is the essence of prayer.
I think it is what Jesus called
being awake. Not being asleep, as it
were. I am particularly struck by
William James’ statement, Reality is where you place your attention. It reminds me of the old conundrum in Stage
1 Philosophy… Is there any sound on a desert island if there is nothing there
to hear it? There is no one paying
attention. Is there any sermon if no
one’s actually listening? If I am
sitting there but my thoughts are on what I’m doing this afternoon, or what I said
to someone, or in Jesus’ words, what will I eat, what will I drink, what
will I wear?... then that, according to William James, is my reality. Where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also, said Jesus[1]. If my life is devoted mainly to myself, or to
my whanau or tribe or sport… perhaps to my panicky fear that I might be bored, needing
always to be entertained… then that is my reality. I am attending to myself, to what I need or enjoy. At a funeral I attended, a friend of the deceased
got up and said in effect and at length… we did all these dubious things, but
we had a ball. Their reality was
themselves… a sad, fragile, pointless reality.
“Me time”, it’s come to be called.
Attention, says Fr Laurence, is
the essence of prayer... and reality is where we place our attention. It is the point of the mantra. We constantly slide off into thoughts about
all manner of things… of course we do, we have fertile minds, well-stocked
brains, and plenty of thoughts… The best
teaching I know says that it’s the return that matters, the unflustered, inner
decision, without guilt or exasperation or rancour, simply to go back to the
mantra. This return says two
things: Firstly, as St Paul put it, we
don’t know how to pray as we ought… and whatever is the “right” way, we are
finding out that it is not via our agenda or our thoughts or our interests or
our fears or our emotions; and secondly, that prayer is the Spirit praying
in us, as we are still and silent, waiting, and gently but definitely
paying attention. As Paul puts it in the
astonishing chapter 8 of Romans: The
Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought,
but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words[2]. And God, who searches the heart, knows what
is the mind of the Spirit…[3]
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