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"

Living by Devotion: Devoted to Life

The last blog ended with a question Awakening to the hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground. It came from a poem by Rumi, what might it mean for you to “kneel and kiss the ground?” It came from the following verse:

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

I have been thinking of these words all week. They speak of what it might mean to live by devotion and to be devoted to life. I was told after the service that the "blogspot" was based on, by Barbara a member at one the congregations I serve, that the instrument is our own human being, our body, which is of course the instrument through which we devote ourselves to life. My sister Mandy also responded to this question with the following:

“I love this permission that allows us to give praise through ’doing what we love! I like these simple words too":

Praise is to see blessings
There are three kinds of thanksgiving.
The most praiseworthy is to thank goodness for the presence of existence.
The second is to praise trouble.
The last one is to accept unconditionally whatever comes…

She added “I suppose it is saying in a nutshell that we should celebrate life.”

She got the idea from a series she had seen on Netflix about “Yunus Emre” who was a Turkish poet and Sufi mystic.

This all got me thinking about what it might mean to live by devotion to devote oneself to life and how this might be achieved, for surely this is the ultimate way to celebrate life, in its entirety; to sing the joy of living in all its mystery.

As I was responding to our Mand’s post the following by Mark Nepo appeared on my Facebook feed. It speaks powerfully to me of what it means to live devotionally, to make your whole life a prayer

“At Every Turn” by Mark Nepo

When I sweat trying to lift
what no one can lift,
I am praying.

When I fly 1000 miles to be
stopped by the moon on the
spine of an ancient mountain,
I am praying.

When I fall on the lawn in laughter
with my dog and she won’t stop
licking my face,
I am praying.

When you are winded by the light
on the photo of your mother
who died so suddenly,
you are praying.

When your grief lets you feel the
pain of those you don’t know,
you are praying.

When life moves through us
for no reason,
we are all praying.

I am humbled that all my efforts
to pray have failed, until
living is praying
with no intent.

Now, my heart is plucked
like the string of a harp
at every turn.

It is through our bodies, our whole human being that we pray, that we offer our devotion to life. If we live devotionally, we are offering a prayer to life itself; if we live with reverence for life itself we are offering a prayer of love to life itself. The object of The General Assembly od Unitarian and Free Christian Churches refers to the worship of God and the celebration of life, among many other things. It is perhaps strange to admit but over time I have found that, in actually fact, I worship life and by doing so I celebrate God, that which is to me the core of all life. I am devoted to life.

Now devotion comes in many shapes and forms. The word “Devotion” is derived from the Latin “devitio” meaning vow or total dedication. It is more than an act that is repeated, devotion speaks of passion, commitment and love. Devotion has a fire to it. Devotion is about both worship and celebration. What is it that you are devoted to?

Devotion can come in many forms The great traditions offer a treasure trove of devotional acts, the most obvious being prayer. Prayer means many things to different people and has done so throughout the ages. You may find yourself praying without even realising it. In its physical sense prayer can mean many things for each tradition. While a Christian may bow their heads and fold their hands, a Sufi may well whirl and a native American may will dance. A Buddhist may well sit quietly in a particular position, while a Hindu may well offer a sacrifice. Jewish and Muslim prayers are quite physical. A Jewish person while praying will bob their heads back and forth while a Muslim will physically prostate themselves. Prayers are not just about silence and spoken words, they can be deeply physical in nature.

I have a found and developed a form of two way prayer, over the last few years. I lead a regular “Singing Meditation”, at Dunham Road and love to take it around with me. It was recently suggested that it is a strange way to describe a devotional practise.

Last week Sue and myself were interviewed for a piece about our upcoming wedding in the local newspaper. Messenger Article During the interview we spoke of how our feelings grew over months of sharing in this devotional practice. The interviewer just couldn’t understand how you could both sing and meditate at the same time. We tried to explain, but realised our explanation was falling on deaf ears (It would seem that this element did not make it into the final article). The thing is to me “Singing Meditation” is the ultimate form of two way prayer. We sing out a variety of devotional words and then we sit and listen in reverential humility. It is the most beautiful form of devotion I have ever been involved in. It would seem that Julia, the interviewer from the Messenger, just didn’t get it. We did and certainly love worked its magic as we sang and shared silence together.

Singing may actually be the ultimate in devotional practise. I believe it was Augustine of Hippo who said that singing is praying twice. Now I’m not one to agree with Augustine, all the time, in fact rarely to be honest, but here I do. When I am singing I feel closer to the divine than in most other activities I engage with. Singing for me is a deeply mindful activity.

Devotion can take many forms and should not be seen necessarily as a solemn activity, done in isolation. Yes we can close ourselves away and pray in isolation as Jesus suggested we should, but it’s not essential. Neither do we have to necessarily use words when we are praying, every activity we engage in can be a form of prayer.

In the Japanese Shinto tradition prayers and blessings are calliagraphed on paper streamers and tied to the branches of trees and bushes. As the streamers wave in the wind the blessings then fly out over the world. In Tibet prayers are carved into wooden band wheels which are spun like a top sending the prayers up into the sky. Sometimes the wheels are positioned in a stream so that the current of the water spins the wheels and the prayers are then carried off without the need of human assistance. Sue and I have just been given some "Prayer Flags" as a wedding gift by a lovely couple John and Sue who attend a group I facilitated at the Urmston congregation I serve.

"Prayer Flags" by New Model Army

One of the five pillars of Islamic practice is to pray facing Mecca five times every day, here it’s not so much the words but the direction of the prayers that matter. During the middle ages monastic orders, that took vows of silence, considered work done by the hands as a form of prayer – therefore everything that was done in life was considered a prayer to God. This seems very similar to the mindfulness practiced by Zen Buddhist – in which every action is practiced with deep attention.

Devotion for me is about finding and giving a voice to my human experience. To repeat something I shared in the last "blogspot", in the words of Rheinhold Neibuhr “Prayer does not change things; prayer changes people, and people change things...Prayer is not hearing voices, prayer is acquiring a voice.” This is what it means to live by devotion, to be devoted to life. Every aspect of life has the potential to be a devotional practice, especially if what you worship is life itself, as I see it. For the Sufi’s every bodily movement has the potential to be a devotional practice if offered in love. You see everything that we do, everything we see, or hear, or touch or taste, or smell can become a devotional practise if you practice in a loving spirit. Social justice work, for others and or for the planet is perhaps the ultimate in devotion to life, the perfect prayer. As Dorothy Day put it “I believe some people – lots of people- pray through the witness of their lives. Through the work they do, the friendships they have, the love they offer people and receive from people.” This is living by devotion, to be devoted to life.

Devotion, making of your life a prayer, is the key to unlock our true human potential. It allows us to become all that we were born to be, to making our matter really matter.

Live by devotion, become devoted to life. Let your life be your prayer. Whether that be your devotional practices or just the way that you act with friends and loved ones. Whether it be the reflective pause before you do or say anything, or a quiet time at some point in the day, whether it be dancing or singing around your kitchen , a social gathering, a concert,  or in a place of worship. Whatever it may be let all that you say and do reflect all that you would hope your life to be. Open your selves up to every encounter in every moment and you will bring to life the divine within you and in every aspect of your life.

Live by devotion, become devoted to life. May your life become your prayer, make it your highest calling, devote yourself to life so that your life may become a prayer.

Let your life be your prayer.

"The Weather"