Mid-Week Musings : A Habit of Attention
'Be still and know that I am God'. I read in this familiar verse from Psalms two commands of equal importance. First, I must be still, something that modern life conspires against. Ten years ago I responded to letters within a couple of weeks and kept my correspondents happy. Five years ago I faxed a response in a couple of days and they seemed content. Now they want email responses the same day and berate me for not using Instant Messaging or a mobile phone.
Mystery, awareness of another world, an emphasis on being rather than doing, even a few moments of quiet do not come naturally to me in this hectic, buzzing world. I must carve out time and allow God to nourish my inner life.
On a walking pilgrimage to Assisi in Italy the writer Patricia Hampl began to make a list in answer to the question, what is prayer? She wrote down a few words. Praise. Gratitude. Begging/pleading/cutting deals. Fruitless whining and puling. Focus. And then the list broke off, for she discovered that prayer only seems like an act of language : 'fundamentally it is a position, a placement of oneself.' She went on to discover that, 'Prayer as focus is not a way of limiting what can be seen; it is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that is.'
Ah, a habit of attention. Be still. In that focus, all else comes into focus. In that rift in my routine, the universe falls into alignment.
Stillness prepares me for the second command : 'know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.' Only through prayer can I believe that truth in the midst of a world that colludes to suppress, not exalt, God.
Philip Yancey
posted by Mel-Vern @ 9:38 PM
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