The falling leaf game: How to live spiritually alive

I will begin with a story “Tired of Clinging” by Richard Bach

“Tired of Clinging” by Richard Bach

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all - young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks at the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current was what each had learned from birth.

But one creature said at last, 'I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.'

The other creatures laughed and said, 'Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you shall die quicker than boredom!'

But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, 'See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!'

And the one carried in the current said, 'I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.'

But they cried the more, 'Saviour!' all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Saviour.

By Richard Bach, from "Illusions"

I was hit by a falling conker the other day whilst out in the park. Do not worry I didn’t think that the sky was falling in. That said neither did I make any life changing scientific discoveries either. It was neither a moment of terror, nor was it discovery. I was though transported back to childhood and fun autumnal games that we often played. Games folk all over the land and in others played, as they did in previous and current generations too. I enjoyed watching a group of children with parents and grandparents collecting conkers the other day.

I have been watching autumn these last few weeks, watching the leaves fall from the trees. I was out the other day when I and a friend noticed a what looked like a school teacher taking notes of the trees in the park. We wondered what he was doing. A few days later we saw a group of school children doing the same thing. I never asked them exactly what they were doing, but I did enjoy the attention the paid to the trees in the park. It has helped me pay closer attention the nature of the park that Molly and I enjoy every day.

Living spiritually alive is very much about paying attention. Last week I mentioned that Simone Weil saw attention as a contemplative practice, through which we reap life’s deepest rewards. She saw attention as the rarest form of generosity. It is through attention that we open up to Grace. Attention as she saw it is something way beyond the mere will, which she saw as graceless. For Weil attention is an opening, like prayer, that is full of Grace. It is through attention that we are touched by the majesty and beauty of life, it is how we live spiritually alive.

I am someone who attempts to practise what they preach. Yes of course I do not do this perfectly but I do at least try. As I have said before in order to live spiritually alive we need to increase our sensitivity to life. This begins by paying attention, being alive to everything, fully embracing everything and giving yourself fully to it.

As I said I was reminded of autumnal games the other. One such being “The falling leaf game”.

The game goes something like this; you look at the trees and watch for when the leaves begin to fall. As you see one falling you attempt to catch the leaf before it hits the ground. This is no easy task, although it doesn’t sound too challenging. After all it’s just a leaf, it has no mind of its own and gravity should surely bring it down safely into your hands. Well apparently not. It seems that there are other forces at work, namely the wind. It is virtually impossible to catch the leaves as they fall because they are constantly blown off course by sudden and unpredictable gusts of wind.

Isn’t life like this, beautiful but unpredictable. The leaves rarely fall directly into our hands. How often are they blown off course just as we are about to catch them.

The falling leaves can teach us so much about the spiritual life and spiritual living. They remind me of another mistake we often make. Yes, we often want to rush through things and wish they were over therefore failing to truly experience the gift of the moment. That said we can often do something which inhibits the moment equally. How many of us want to cling on to what we are experiencing right now. David Bumbaugh captures this beautifully in the following meditative poem “Dancing in the wind”

“Dancing in the wind” David Bumbaugh

Except for a few stubborn holdouts
The tree outside my window
Is bare of leaves.
The wind,
This October morning,
Worries those few remaining leaves,
Pulling them this way,
twisting them that way,
tugging at them
until, one by one,
exhausted by the ceaseless effort to hang on,
they go dancing in the wind.
As they waltz past my window,
The stubbornness has left them
And they are finally free.
What is it about living things
That we expend so much energy resisting the inevitable,
Hanging on to what is already gone,
Hoping to sustain a season
Into times that are unreasonable,
Clinging to old habits
Despite the pain and discomfort?
Why are we so afraid to dance in the wind?

Why are we so afraid to dance in the wind? It’s a good question. By clinging to things, whether that be people, possessions, seasons, situations, prestige, appearance, beliefs, disbeliefs, feelings, we fail to experience life fully. We block ourselves from experiencing the full gift of life. We become like the creatures in the story we heard earlier, clinging on but not fully experiencing life. They would rather die of boredom than risk letting go and trust in the current. And then one brave one lets go and they simply mock it as it crashes against the rocks and suffers the pain of freedom until it learns the dance of the current. Still, they are afraid though to let go and experience the freedom themselves. They want their messiah to do it for them or they merely want to spin stories of his journey rather than seeing him as the example and letting go themselves and experiencing the freedom of the current.

The spiritual life, living spiritually alive, is about increasing our sensitivity to reality. This begins by simply paying attention. By lingering for a moment, the imperfect, unfinished moment, and just as importantly let the moment linger in you. To badly paraphrase Whitman, every leaf is a love letter from God. You can pick one up for a moment, but then you must leave it so someone else to find

It is the same with all of life, if we truly pay attention and increase our sensitivity to it. All life can teach us to be all that we can be. We can even learn from the leaves as they fall freely and dance in the wind.

Here’s an extract from Whitman’s Book “Leaves of Grass” from the chapter “Song of Myself” 48th Stanza, that I just badly paraphrased, pay attention the last few lines.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.)

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

Pay attention to all that is alive around you, we do not need to cling to anything, be open, live spiritually alive. Why do so many of us cling to things and will not let go? Why do we want to live with the illusion of control? Or on the other hand why do we want to rush through things and not experience the moment we are in? Why are we always wishing for the end of things? What are we afraid of? Why do we not want to fully experience life?

I had several conversations with people last week. Some I have known all my life and others I’ve known for only a short time. In each conversation there was a constant theme. The theme was fear. Fear I believe is at the core the two autumn themes I’ve been speaking of…to either wish days away or to cling to something that is over. These are the fears symbolic of autumn. It is fear that is at the root of the need to cling on and or control and it is fear that causes this desire to wish certain feelings away.

I’m no different myself by the way. I can want to wish certain experiences away, especially if they are uncomfortable, even painful. I noticed myself doing it the other day when I working out in the gym. I don’t always want to go through the pain of it, I just want the results that would come from doing so, but still I stuck at it. I have learnt to develop faith. I’ve also clung onto comfortable things and painful and destructive things at times in my life, for the fear of what might be if I just let go and let the wind of life take hold. It was fear that stopped me.

But what causes the fear, what causes this lack of trust. Well I think that it is lack of faith. Faith in life itself. It comes from a belief that life is hostile, against us and something that cannot be trusted. This is why we cling to things and will not let go. The antidote is faith. Faith in life itself, but this of course is a risk. It is a risk worth taking though and certainly beats the boredom of clinging to those rocks we heard about in the earlier story. We need to learn to let go and trust in the current and trust in the wind and to trust in the ever changing nature of life.

We need to learn to dance too, to play those autumnal games, conkers, catching leaves, hey maybe try kite flying. There is a joy in the ungovernable wind.

This brings to mind a lovely excerpt from Anthony Demello’s “The song of the Bird” it goes by the title “Don’t Change”

"I was neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. Then one day someone said to me, Don't change. I love you just as you are. Those words were music to my ears: Don't change, Don't change. Don't change . . . I love you as you are. I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed!

Now I know that I couldn’t really change until I found someone who would love me whether I changed or not.

Is this how you love me, God?"

Here lays both the problem and the solution. This is why I believe we cling to things or simply wish them away. This is why so many of us are afraid to fully experience the life we are experiencing right here right now. We don’t trust in life. We believe that life is untrustworthy. We fail to experience that love that is so present in life. We feel unacceptable as we are. Certainly this was my problem for so long. Thank God it is no longer the case. I do, I do, I do…every day…

You can see it in the leaves, in the trees in the folk and dogs in the park, in everything. All you have to do is pay attention, give yourself wholeheartedly to it.

This is how we learn to love life, to be a part of life? It begins by paying attention. By increasing our sensitivity to life. It begins perhaps by being like those falling leaves. By falling like those autumnal leaves, by not wishing away our experiences and by not clinging on…It begins by simply letting go and by learning to dance in the wind…

Let’s all learn to dance in the wind…Lets all become like falling leaves…Let’s all learn to dance the impermanence dance…Don’t pick them up though, leave them where you find them, for someone else to see.

So, let’s live more spiritually alive. Let’s increase our sensitivity to life. May our lives become our prayer.

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

Cultivating Grace

Here’s a beautiful poem by the farmer poet Wendell Berry

“Grace” by Wendell Berry

The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged.
See how surely it has sought itself,
its roots passing lordly through the earth.
See how without confusion it is
all that it is, and how flawless
its grace is. Running or walking, the way
is the same. Be still. Be still.
“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”

In the “Sacred Art of Lovingkindness” Rami Shapiro wrote

“Cultivating grace is a bit of a paradox. You cannot get what you always and already have. There is nothing you can or need to do to merit grace. All you need do is accept grace. The reason this is so difficult for us is that our hands are full. We are burdened by carrying the past and the future around with us wherever we go, and have no room for the grace of the present moment. Cultivating grace means putting down the burden of time, and opening our hands to the timeless now.”

It is hard to accept the giftedness of the life we have. This is often because we carry too many burdens of the past around with us. Shapiro is suggesting that to cultivate the gifts of life, all we need to do is prepare ourselves for it, to open ourselves to it. Or to put it another way, to catch the winds of grace, our task is to set our sails; we jus tneed to open our sails and to sail on that wind. The winds are always blowing, its just that we don’t always catch the wind. Now there is often a good reason for this, usually fear, caused from the past. We often prefer to batten down the hatches, than embrace the wind. The wind after all cannot be tamed, it can be a wild beast. As Hurricane Milton has proved once again this week.

As the wonderful hymn goes “Life is the greatest gift of all.” Something we don’t always treasure I know. I certainly haven’t in the past. Throughout our lives many things happen over which we have little say. I do not believe we choose what happens to us. What we do have a say in is how respond to what happens to us. The paraphrase Frankl it is our greatest freedom, perhaps our second greatest gift after life itself.

Neither do I think that life is predetermined, mapped out before us. That all things are inevitable. I do have a sense of the Lure of Divine Love, that if we take time in quietness, that we can connect to that Divine aspect within ourselves and life itself and can then make the wise choices in life, this tapping into this second free gift, this second Grace. If we are too weighed down by things it can be difficult to be open to this therefore cultivate Grace.

I have been marking 21 years of sobriety this week. I was offered the gift of new life having found myself in a dark hole. I accepted this second gift and continued to set my sails ever since. There’s been the odd storm, but generally speaking I have sailed in calmer seas. I have accepted the second freedom and made the most of what I have given, I have cultivated the grace and shared it with many others. Thank you.

Grace is one of those interesting theological terms, that has been understood in so many ways. The most common form is known as “Common Grace”. In the Christian tradition, this is the Grace that is given to each person by God, whether they are believers or not. That said it is not a word owned by this tradition, there are many and varied meanings. These include a type of movement, elegant and refined, like a swan of ballerina. Another would a talent or gift bestowed on someone like Mozart. It could be the condition of being favoured by someone. Or the way a person behaves, acting in good grace. Been given a grace period say in the payment of something. A grace note in music is an extravagant extra that could be played if the performer were so inclined to indulge. A prayer offered in thanks before a meal. A title of someone in high office, “Your Grace”. We can also honour someone with Grace. There are other and varied understanding from the many religious and spiritual traditions. So it is important to understand that when a person speaks of Grace, they may not mean exactly the same thing.

Now for me when I speak of Grace it is about openness, about being open and responding in a generous way. It is a gift offered freely to someone or life itself. It is a response from our heart. It is our ultimate freedom, our ultimate gift we are given. Although to truly cultivate this we need not to be too weighed down by whatever burdens we carry. If we are too weighed down we will struggle to respond to anything and or listen to our own hearts and souls. We will be unable to truly cultivate our grace. By the way we also need to be open to truly accept the grace offered to us.

Paul Brunton in “The Gift of Grace: Awakening to Its Presence” defined grace as the manifestation of God’s friendliness. I like this. That said I want to extend it to the friendliness in everything. Now for me God is at the heart of everything, a kind if panentheism, but still it is for us to engage with this friendliness and bring it to life, to manifest it through our lives. Again I see this as our ultimate freedom.

You can enjoy the grace of life each and every day if you are open enough to receive. It’s always there, its just that sometimes we are closed off to it.

Frederick Beuchner in “Beyond Words” said the following:

“After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody's much interested anymore. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left.

Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?

A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do.

The grace of God means something like: "Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you."

There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it.

Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”

The key is to be open to both the giving and receiving, it is our ultimate freedom, our ultimate grace.

What stops us often is a sense that we don’t deserve it. That there is something wrong with us, that we live with a sense of shame. It is shame that keeps us locked in and closed down. We become weighed down and closed off to the Grace of life and thus unable to respond in graceful ways.

Lewis B. Smedes in “Shame and Grace: Healing the Shame We Don’t Deserve” said the following:

“Shame is heavy; grace is light. Shame and grace are the two counter-forces in the human spirit: shame depresses; grace lifts. Shame is like gravity, a psychic force that pulls us down. Grace is like levitation, a spiritual force that defies gravity. If our spiritual experience does not lighten our life, we are not experiencing grace.”

It is the shame that holds us back, that closes us in. It doesn’t have to be like that. If we could only recognise that gift that is within us. What Mark Nepo has called “The Timeless Spot of Grace”. He wrote:

“Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by god. It is this spot of grace that issues peace. Psychologists call this spot the Psyche, Theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the Seat of Unconscious, Hindu masters call it Atman, Buddhists call it Dharma, Rilke calls it Inwardness, Sufis call it Qalb, And Jesus calls it the Center of our Love.

To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core.”

Life is the greatest gift of all, for better or for worse. We don’t get to choose what happens. Our freedom, our greatest gift, our second grace is in how we respond to life and to others and of course to ourselves. It is our greatest gift, our second grace. We need to be and remain open and not too weighed down.

This requires us to pay attention. Simone Weil saw attention as a contemplative practice, through which we reap life’s deepest rewards, perhaps this is how we cultivate Grace. She saw attention as the rarest form of generosity. It is through attention that we open up to Grace. Attention as she saw it is something way beyond the mere will, which she saw as graceless. For Weil attention is an opening, like prayer, that is full of Grace.

So maybe this is where we begin, in attention. Maybe this is how we prepare ourselves, how we cultivate Grace. Attention is how we accept the giftedness of life. The winds of Grace are always blowing, all around us. We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we do have the freedom to respond. This is our ultimate freedom, our second grace. We activate this, we cultivate this Grace, by paying attention. In so doing we get to bless each other, this world and in return it blesses us.

I’m going to end with some words of blessing. You know e need to bless more. We can all bless. WE bless by giving ourselves wholeheartedly to life.

“Choose to Bless the World” by Rebecca Anne Parker

Your gifts—whatever you discover them to be—
can be used to bless or curse the world.

The mind's power,
the strength of the hands,
the reaches of the heart,
the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing, waiting

Any of these can serve to feed the hungry,
bind up wounds,
welcome the stranger,
praise what is sacred,
do the work of justice
or offer love.

Any of these can draw down the prison door,
hoard bread,
abandon the poor,
obscure what is holy,
comply with injustice
or withhold love.

You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?

Choose to bless the world.

The choice to bless the world is more than an act of will,
a moving forward into the world
with the intention to do good.

It is an act of recognition,
a confession of surprise,
a grateful acknowledgment
that in the midst of a broken world
unspeakable beauty, grace and mystery abide.

There is an embrace of kindness
that encompasses all life, even yours.

And while there is injustice, anesthetization, or evil
there moves a holy disturbance,
a benevolent rage,
a revolutionary love,
protesting, urging, insisting
that which is sacred will not be defiled.

Those who bless the world live their life
as a gesture of thanks
for this beauty
and this rage.

The choice to bless the world can take you into solitude
to search for the sources
of power and grace;
native wisdom, healing, and liberation.

More, the choice will draw you into community,
the endeavor shared,
the heritage passed on,
the companionship of struggle,
the importance of keeping faith,

the life of ritual and praise,
the comfort of human friendship,
the company of earth
the chorus of life welcoming you.

None of us alone can save the world.
Together—that is another possibility, waiting.

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

Attention without feeling is only a report

I have a friend who pays attention, who notices everything. It is a wonderful quality, although it can be somewhat exhausting for them at times. I empathise and am both blessed and cursed by this aspect of humanity. I notice things.

My friend hosted a dinner party at the weekend. It was a wonderful evening. I paid attention to them as they paid attention to the needs of those present. The food was incredible and the company equally so. Each persona needs were fed, each was served in a loving and attentive way and the conversations were listened to with an attentive ear. It was wonderful to observe someone giving their full attention to others. It was a person offering what they had to others in a deeply loving way, it was a joy to behold. It was deep devotion, prayer in action if I have ever witnessed it. My friend reminded me of both Mary and Martha in a passage from Luke’s Gospel.

I saw a similar example last Tuesday morning going for coffee with friends. It was my turn to pay and I was mesmerised by the young woman behind the counter, called Mars, who knew the orders of all 12 of us. Now we are regulars at this place, but I didn’t have a clue what each of us drink. Whereas Mars clearly pays attention to each of her customers, she is devoted to her work and those she dutifully serves. She also pays attention to us as individuals, she listens and shares as we listen to her. I often take time in conversation, I notice when something isn’t right with her and of course we talk. My gift it seems to many.

Mars told me a few days later that generally she has a terrible memory. She is diagnosed with “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” (ADHD). So generally she can struggle with paying attention. Yet her love and dedication to her work seems to focus her attention.

Attention is about love. It is love in its most basic form. When we pay attention to one another, when we notice each other’s needs, we are living by love. By paying attention to another’s needs we are loving them and accepting them as they are. This to me is the love that is spoken of in the great spiritual traditions. It is more than passively observing in a mindful way. It is also more than empathy, feeling with another, true attention leads to devoted action. It is form of deep generous love. When we are generous we give our whole hearts to life and one another.

It is said that whenever the Buddha would teach he would always begin with lessons on generosity. He did this because it brings with it joy and self respect and therefore it is a platform from which to look at all our life experiences, including the very painful ones and thus not become overwhelmed by them. It is thought that the Buddha always began talking about generosity because he believed that we all have something to give. Our gifts might not be material in nature.

Giving begins with attention, in one form or another. It might be by offering a listening ear, enabling another to be comfortable in an uncomfortable situation, I have another friend who is wonderful at this. Generosity is a kind of hospitality it welcomes the other, the stranger as they are, exactly as they are. Attention is the ultimate welcome and act of generosity. Something I saw in my friend at the dinner party and Mars in the coffee shop, something I see in many others too. It brings me back also to the welcome of Mary and Martha.

The visit of Jesus to Mary and Martha’s is a fascination to me. It comes at the end of chapter 10 in Luke’s Gospel immediately after “The Parable of the Good Samaritan”, suggesting to me that it is teaching something about how we should offer loving hospitality. To me this is all about paying attention. Something I witnessed with my friend and in Mars at Café Nero, for example. They were both Mary and Martha it seems. Generally Mary’s Way, that of prayerful devotion is seen as the better way. Love though is also about service, both are acts of attention. Remember the visit follows the story of the Good Samaritan. A parable of loving attention and devoted service, a story of love wherever it is needed. Isn’t this the essence of the spiritual life, this is faith and works. The story of Mary and Martha seems to me to be an invitation; an invitation to everyone to decide how we use our attention; to explore how we pay attention and to whom. It is about love in its highest form. For what we give our attention to we love. Attention is true love; attention is the most basic form of love. When we give our attention to someone or something we bless and in turn we are blessed by our love. My friend and Mars both exemplified this love, they incarnated the Love spoken of throughout the Gospels.

It matters what we pay attention to in life. Yes it is vital to the spiritual life, but also the physical life too. Actually, I tend not to separate the two. Attention is the key to problem solving, creativity, and civilization in general. Our lives depend on what we pay attention to. This is why everything competes for our attention. We are so saturated by information these days, that it can be difficult just to pay attention to the life we inhabit. Yet our lives depend upon it. We need to pay attention; we need to pay attention to what really matters.

Unitarian Universalist minister Rev Victoria Safford in her sermon “An Ethics of Attention” said:

“Pay attention, say the mystics and the poets, and the little kids tugging on our legs. Pay attention, says the sunset and the ice-cold morning, and the person telling you their story. Pay attention, say the good friends at the barbecue, and the good food, and the voices in your head and heart. Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”

It matters what we pay attention to; it matters also how we pay attention; it matters not only what we look at, but how we look at life. Attention may well be our most precious resource we have. Remember it is how we love; remember it is how we both feel and express our love. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus is reported to have said “You become what you give your attention to. If you don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will.” Attention is not a passive act, it is deliberate, an ethical act. For if we do not choose our attention will be put upon us by all this information that we are constantly drowned by. It matters what we pay attention to and how we pay attention, it shapes our very lives.

The twentieth century French philosopher Simone Weil viewed attention as a moral virtue, just like justice and courage. She differentiated it from concentration. It is not just about focussing on minutiae, it is more than mindfulness. As she observed: Concentration constricts. Attention expands — concentration tires. Attention rejuvenates. Concentration is focused thinking. Attention is thinking suspended.

For Weil attention ought to be seen as the rarest and purest form of generosity. She saw attention as the pathway to transformation, far superior to our human will. In “First and Last Notebooks” she wrote “We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.” She believed that the will alone constricts the spirit while attention is about expanding it. Attention opens us up to so much more.

Weil equated attention to prayer. Love and service to me is highest form of prayer. It makes me think of the attention of my friend. Weil wrote “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.” This brings me back to both Mary and Martha, Mars in the coffee shop and my friend hosting that dinner party, with such love care and attention.

Simone Weil saw a deep connection between our capacity for paying attention and our capacity for prayer. “Prayer consists of attention,” she said, “It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer.”

Now of course paying attention will affect us, it should affect us and deeply. As Mary Oliver wrote “Attention without feeling is only a report”. Everything touched Mary deeply, it affected her and she didn’t merely report what she saw. Her attention was the ultimate prayer and her poetry was devotion itself. As she said “Attention is the beginning of devotion” This is beautifully exemplified in the poem “Spring”, which I will end this morning’s service with. It is a poem about spring, which is on the horizon, but it is also a poem about how we should live our lives. We should live like the black bear coming down the mountain as it awakens from hibernation, showing her “perfect love”. Mary asked the question how should we live our lives? Well attentively, loving the world, living our lives like a prayer. As Mary wrote “There is only one question: how to love the world”. Loving the world means simply paying attention to the life that we are surrounded by, loving it by devoting our selves fully to it, being touched and affected by it. Just like my friend who hosted her dinner party and Mars in the coffee shop on Tuesday morning. They served from their hearts and they paid attention to everyone’s needs without discrimination. They showed me how to simply love the world, it is not that difficult. All you have to do is pay attention, but to do so with feeling.

Here's the poem, I invite you to pay attention to it.

"Spring" by Mary Oliver

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"