Paying real attention to the world around us, to ourselves, to
other people and things, is the way we grow in awareness and love.
I know people on college courses whose minds are not really on what
is being taught. I felt like writing of one student: "He was there,
but he did not attend."
To be attentive means to give of ourselves, to stop being
self-centred, and to enter into a relationship of love. It is
interesting that those who love what they attend to nearly always
find it easier to learn. This loving also helps to produce joy in
our actions.
Whatever our spirituality, if we are to become what we were
intended to be, we need to concern ourselves not with other
worlds, but with this world that God has given to us.
It is here and now in this life that we need to deepen our
awareness of what is around us. We need to be attentive to the
place we are in and the people we meet. This includes being
properly attentive to ourselves. We cannot love our neighbours as
ourselves if we do not have a proper respect and love for our own
being.
In the same way, we cannot really say that we are able to give
our attention to God if we have failed to attend to the world and
the people around us. I am convinced that those who do not listen
carefully to others are not likely to listen with care to the word
of God. We need to learn that the way to the Great Other is through
other people and things.
God speaks to us through his creation. When we respect the
otherness of people and creation, the holiness of life is revealed
to us. The way to the holy is in the ordinary: the ordinary is far
more extraordinary than we think or imagine.
We can experience at any moment what Elizabeth Barrett Browning
writes of in her poem Aurora Leigh:
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 it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.
The burning bush can be seen as a symbol of all creation; for
the whole world is afire with the love and the presence of God.
Suddenly you turn a corner, and find you are approaching holy
ground. The very earth on which you stand has the potential to
reveal God's presence: each bush, tree, flower, bird, or person has
the power to open your eyes to the beyond in your midst.
Like Jacob, if we are fortunate, we will awake out of sleep and
say: "Surely the Lord is in this place - and I did not know it!"
(see Genesis 28.10-17). We are all offered such experiences, though
often our sensitivities are dulled, and we walk by without
noticing.
We need to reawaken our senses, and see the potential of each
encounter, each person, each blade of grass, each bush, to reveal
the glory of God. When the eyes of our hearts are opened in
this way, we will see a whole new world, and find that we have
occasions for alleluia.
This is the second of four edited extracts from Occasions
for Alleluia by David Adam (SPCK, £8.99 (CT Bookshop £8.10 -
use code CT812 ); 978-0-281-06577-6).