Of attention and all saints' day

Today, November 1, is All Saints’ Day. On this feast we honor the saints, known and unknown, who are triumphant in heaven. Some of my favorite saints include St Raphael (more), St Rita of Cascia (more), St Colmcille (more), Blessed Solanus Casey (more). These are saints we can call on in every situation, in all suffering, in all joy. These saints have been my companions in good and bad times, treasured friends who’ve helped me, comforted me, warned and taught me. A note, Catholics do not adore saints, we pray to them, asking for their intercession and help, just the way we ask our friends and family to help us. If you are especially blessed, as I am, then you've got saints in your family. I’ll write more about these lesser known to the world saints during November, a month for remembering the dead.

One saint I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is Julian of Norwich (more), a 14th century mystic and anchoress. Little is known about Julian’s life, but she left behind a fascinating and beautiful account of the visions (shewings, she called them) she received after a bout of illness, a near death experience during which she prayed to known God better. In one of these shewings, Julian holds a hazelnut in her hand. As she marvels at the hazelnut, Julian asks, “what may this be?” The answer she receives from God: “it is all that is made.” This tiny, seemingly inconsequential thing that could be easily dropped and lost forever is considered by God to be all that is made, a thing of the utmost importance in creation, a hazelnut. Julian goes on to say, “in this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.”

And in this making, loving, and keeping is attention.

It matters that we pay attention and it matters what we pay attention to. We’ve all seen it, two people across from each other in a restaurant, both scrolling through their phones, maybe photographing their food, looking up occasionally to comment to the person across from them before quickly looking back down again, neither one attending to the other or to the food they are being served. Maybe we’ve been that dinner companion, too focused on our phones to bother much with what is in front of us. Maybe we’ve been the other, ignored, companion, sitting, waiting to be noticed. It’s sad and a waste of time and money and good food. I know when I am with friends or family that as soon as the phones come out, that’s the end. We may spend more hours together, but we aren’t really together.

The poet Mary Oliver says that, “attention is the beginning of devotion.”

Matthew Crawford has written a whole book on how our attention is being sold to the highest bidder (check out his website).

While writing this letter I decided to fry some toast, dividing my attention between the two tasks. The toast was nearly burned beyond saving, the kitchen smells like smoke, and this letter had to be nearly rewritten. Let that be a lesson!