Spiritual Attentiveness

By Jim Peterson

Wake up. Look. See!
To pay attention to life
Is to gain one’s life.

What, wisdom asks, do you get when you really pay attention to your life? A life! This suggests that life in its fullest is lived only as we pay attention to it. On the reverse side, it has been observed that that of which we are unconscious rules us. Our behavior is largely shaped by forces, dispositions, habits, beliefs, assumptions of which we are mostly unaware because they are so deeply embedded in our body, psyche, and spirit. We can sleep our way through life spurred and guided by such unconscious influences. But this need not be the case; we can wake up, the first step on the journey of spirit. The antidote to walking through life in our sleep is the practice of paying attention.

The Hebrew scriptures tell the story of Moses encountering a burning bush in the wilderness.
When he sees the bush ablaze yet not consumed, he stops, turns, and pays attention. Elizabeth
Barrett Browning captures such a moment as only a poet can:
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“Earth’s crammed with heaven / And every common bush afire with God, / But only he
who sees takes off his shoes; / The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” [Excerpt from
Aurora Leigh]

I like to think that the bush Moses saw was ablaze all day long, and many a traveler had passed
by unseeing; only Moses was practiced enough in paying attention to see something more than
a brightly lit bush.

Have you ever experienced something like this: seeing something or someone with wider
eyes, with the eyes of the heart, where something more, something deeper that is there
all along is revealed?

But there is more to the story. It goes on to reveal that when Moses paid attention, he was
instructed to take off his shoes – this was holy ground, after all; it is sacred space that we enter
when we pay deep attention. Then Moses is addressed by a voice from the bush that ultimately
leads to his calling to be the leader and former of a nation. The steps in this story are: stop /
turn / attend / listen / and respond. Moses full life is revealed and turns on this experience,
which starts with his paying attention.

The challenge for us is that paying attention in this deep way is hard work. It takes intention, an
act of our will. And it is fraught with uncertainty and fear: What will we “hear”? Will it call for a
response that we don’t want to make (Moses, indeed, argued vigorously with God about his
calling). Will it dislodge us from our comfortable life (shepherding, in Moses’ case)? Will we be
safe afterwards? Will we be alone; who will accompany us? These are fundamental questions of
life’s meaning, of safety, of belonging. Sometimes it is so much easier to stick with sleepwalking
through life where these questions can be kept, we imagine, at bay.

For us to take the risk of paying attention we need to open ourselves in trust that this is what
the journey of faith requires and that we come into the fullness of who we are and are meant
to be only in this way. This is not a trust that we can gin up for ourselves. It must be uncovered,
discovered, received, taken in. While life experience can sometimes undermine this process of
trust building, it is when we attend to life more fully that it can generate, build, and sustain our
trust. If we cannot find it readily within ourselves, the deep trust in Life we observe in others
can help. Here too, paying attention (in this case to others) is a fruitful practice. Moreover, trust
builds on trust, and if we step out in small ways, the results can make bigger steps possible. The
underlying engine of this growth is the practice of paying attention and in doing that,
responding as we are able.

In what ways has trust grown in you? How has your own attentiveness to unfolding life
played a role in this growth?

Ultimately, our trust is in the “voice” we hear from the burning bush – in the “more,” the
universe, a higher power, or the mystery we call God (or any of several other names). It is, at
heart, a relationship. It is not just a “what” we are paying attention to, but more deeply a
“who.” As we pay attention more and more to this “who,” we discover more and more the
fullness of our own life.
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Wake up! Look and see. And gain your life.