Attention is the Beginning of Devotion
Resisting distraction as a spiritual practice
Poet Mary Oliver said, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” You cannot love something or someone you do not truly see.
One of the most devastating casualties in our age of carefully constructed distraction is our diminishing capacity to pay attention. To see something and simply receive what it is. To gaze upon someone and appreciate who they are. To focus our attention on just one thing for several minutes without getting bored or drawn away by a new shiny social media update or breaking news story.
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.”
The student who is learning to keep distractions at bay and concentrate their whole being on solving an equation or understanding 19th century Russian politics is a person who is, often unknowingly, growing their capacity for prayer.
“Every time that we really concentrate our attention, we destroy the evil in ourselves,” Weil wrote. “If we concentrate this intention, a quarter of an hour of attention is better than a great many good works.”
Every morning (and sometimes in the evening), when I show up to light a candle and say my prayers, this is the capacity I seek to cultivate. I am learning to pay attention to God’s movement in my life and in the world. I am learning to keep the relentless churning of the 24/7 news cycle at bay so I can focus as much of my attention as possible on God.
This is why certain “auxiliary” practices also help to cultiate my capacity to pay attention. contribute to my ability to pay attention. Walking in the woods (without my phone). Playing with my dog. Ambling aimlessly through an art museum. Reading poetry out loud. Sitting in the front yard, listening and watching for birds I’m not yet familiar with.
I think this is why I tend to pray out loud now, too. It helps to keep my mind tethered to the Psalm or Scripture or collect I’m praying right now in this moment, rather than speeding ahead to see what’s next, or floating off into my task list for the day.
Something I’m trying to do more of lately is block out chunks of time for “deep work,” where my phone is on Do Not Disturb, my office door is shut, my headphones are in, and I’m able to concentrate all my attention and faculties on a creative task for several hours at a time.
I see this as a spiritual practice, because I think that as I unhook my brain from the constant connectivity of the digital world and focus on creating something, I am also growing my capacity for paying attention, and, as Mary Oliver said, attention is the beginning of devotion.
A life of devotion sounds like the kind of life I want to live. A life devoted to things that really matter, things that birth beauty and bring blessing in the world.
Simone Weil also said, “We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them.” As we learn to pay attention, we’ll stop missing so many of the precious gifts that I suspect are all around us.