Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘Attention’

To Kneel in the Present

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”― John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

“Because what you give your attention to is the person you become. Put another way: the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to.” ― John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

Daily.
Depth.
Discipline.
Deliberate.
Practice.
Intention.
Focus.
Devotion.
To single-task.
To pause and look, longer.
To stay and stick.
To linger.
To be ever present.
Awake.
Aware.
Threshold to devotion.
Unforced rhythms of grace.
Portal to soul.
Be relentless, ruthless, radical to create space for being.
Gratitude, awe and wonder lives here.

“Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”― John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

Read Well

“There is always something left to love.”― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”― Voltaire

Like a book
We skim many pages of our days
Rereading some to understand, to redo
Underlining moments to make them stick
To imprint in memory
Read today well
Not merely skimming, passing through without attention
Seek to understand, to learn, to see the story unfolding
Read and write the narrative
How it all ties together in moments, ordinary and extraordinary
Inquire. Love. Dance.

“How will the world change if we do not question it?”― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician’s Elephant

Trance

“From wonder into wonder existence opens.” – Lao Tzu

“One clear moment, one of trance
One missed step, one perfect dance
One missed shot, one and only chance
Life is all…but one fleeting glance.”
― Sanober Khan

Caught in lists, checkboxes, to-dos
Busy, jamming and stuffing time
Multitasking, commitments, obligations
Break the pattern, the habit
Skimming the surface
The trance of transaction
Wake up and see beauty, delight
Present in the present
Awaiting your gaze
Your attention
Awe and wonder
Auto pilot off, snooze alarm too
Arise oh sleeper
Live awake.

“Wisdom begins in wonder.” – Socrates

Wait a Minute

“According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has its own angel bending over it, whispering, “Grow, grow.”” – Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“Moses could have decided that he would come back tomorrow to see if the bush was still burning, when he had a little more time, only then he would not have been Moses. He would just have been a guy who got away with murder, without ever discovering what else his life might have been about. What made him Moses was his willingness to turn aside. Wherever else he was supposed to be going and whatever else he was supposed to be doing, he decided it could wait a minute. He parked the sheep and left the narrow path in order to take a closer look at a marvelous sight.” – Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

Paying attention.
No rushing or hurrying.
Remaining and residing.
Not moving on or going back.
Staying in the present moment.
Paying attention.
Not distracted, delayed or racing to the next thing.
Paying attention.
In reverence, in awe, in struggle, in ease, in wonder.
Song of a bird.
Burning bush.
Blade of grass.
Waiting and wandering.
Paying attention.
Tuning out the noise to hear the whisper.
Grow. Grow. Grow.
In due time, not our time.
In due time.
Paying attention.

“The practice of paying attention is as simple as looking twice at people and things you might just as easily ignore. To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should anyone do such things? I cannot imagine—unless one is weary of crossing days off the calendar with no sense of what makes the last day different from the next. Unless one is weary of acting in what feels more like a television commercial than a life.” – Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

lOOk and listen

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”― Mary Oliver

“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.” – Marcus Aurelius

A painted rock on a snowbank on a morning walk
A prompt
A clue
A calling
To notice
To awaken
To observe
Listen
Look
Slow enough to see the detail in the moment
The gravity of now
Time held still to reveal and rejoice in what already is overflowing
Even God rested on Sunday
And it was and is good.

“By letting go it all gets done.”― Lao-Tzu