SPIRIT LENT/EASTER | SPRING 2018
S A I N T S T E P H E N ’ S E P I S C O PA L C H U R C H
I want my attention back “I
want my attention back.” That’s how the New York essayist and photographer, Craig Mod, described his mindset last year, before he was granted a 28-day residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts near Lynchburg. He went there to finish a book he was writing, and he unplugged from all internet activity for the duration, because he was too distracted. In our world of constant connectivity, I suspect this is a feeling many of us share. We want our attention back.
As Blaise Pascal wrote in the seventeenth century, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” So, I commend to you this Lent, in a time you set aside for deeper, contemplative pondering, Brother David’s piece (page 2).Its title and brevity belie its depth and its power to change your life.
By Gary D. Jones
As we enter the season of Lent, I invite you to do just that – get your attention back. For many, it won’t be easy. It might require resolve and some new habits. But it can be done, and getting your attention back could mean the difference between truly experiencing Easter and merely observing Easter. A whole new life (what Jesus called “the Kingdom of God”) is available to us now. But the simple truth is that if our attention is stolen, we cannot enter it. In this edition of Seasons of the Spirit, you’ll find some interesting ideas for the observance of a holy Lent, and I want to commend to you especially a short piece entitled, “Simplicity,” by Brother David Vryhof, a good friend and Episcopal monk at the Society of St. John the Evangelist. If you are attentive to the wisdom this little tract offers, Brother David’s “Simplicity” could save your life. I mean that literally. But attention is key, and we are right to be concerned that our attention is being stolen. Billboards and commercials, internet pop-ups and smart phone apps, even videos at gas pumps. And as our attention is stolen, so is our engagement with each other. When was the last time you were in a meeting or at a meal, and someone was NOT looking at his or her smart phone? And even if no one looked at their phones, the mere presence of the devices has been shown to increase distraction and decrease quality of local engagement. The French philosopher Simone Weil wrote, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.” Craig Mod asks hauntingly, “Then is the lack of attention the opposite? Does a lack of attention presuppose fear and hate?” Reading the news today, I wonder. When we are robbed of our attention, are we also robbed of our compassion? Are we robbed of our ability to pray? Is there a correlation between the rise of 24/7 news and social media feeds and the decline of kindness, gentleness, and civil discourse? The challenge to a life of prayer and a deeper relationship with God is not just external. The problem is not just “out there” in technology, for example. As Martin Laird has pointed out, anyone who has tried meditation and other contemplative practices quickly discovers that we all have a raging cocktail party going on in our heads, with all sorts of distracting, internal chatter. Many of us give up on contemplative practices when we discover this incessant inner noise. We figure, “I guess I’m just not good at this.” But all the enduring religions of the world affirm that in fact, all people are made for contemplation – there is nothing more natural for a human being. Remember the last time you experienced the time-stopping, jaw-dropping wonder of a beautiful sunset. That is a contemplative moment, and it is as deeply human as it gets. The key is learning practices and habits of life that attune you to something deeper than the cocktail party in your head and return you to your own true and wonderful nature, and to the wonder in the people and world around you.
I also commend to you our three-week Lenten series on John Milton’s Paradise Lost (page 3). There’s nothing simple or brief about Milton’s epic – it will require your full attention. But we have a fabulous and enthusiastic guide in Professor Gardner Campbell. Great art and literature like this tend to reward us according to the degree that we give ourselves to them. As Karen Armstrong said, “Good theology is a form poetry, an attempt to express the inexpressible, and you can’t read a sonnet by Shakespeare in the chatter and tumult of a party.” And finally, notice the article by Peter Marty, “Church is inconvenient” (page 10). In an overly-busy and stressed out world, we naturally gravitate toward that which is convenient. And we are more and more segregating ourselves into like-minded social circles and neighborhoods, because it’s easier that way. But some things that are good and important for us are inconvenient. And worth it! At the end of his 28-day residency in rural Virginia, Craig Mod wrote a magazine article about his experience. It’s entitled, “How I Got My Attention Back.” (Ironically, it appeared in Wired magazine.) “There are a thousand beautiful ways to start the day that don’t begin with looking at your phone,” he wrote. “And yet so few of us choose to do so.” It doesn’t sound as churchy to say it this way, but I think Lent can be, for many of us, a kind of 40-day residency in the wilderness of a simpler life, a time to focus on “getting our attention back,” so that we can truly experience Easter, rather than simply observe it. ✤
in this issue: Monastic wisdom: simplicity 2 Surrounded with Sense: a series on Paradise Lost 3 Lent, Holy Week and Easter 4 St. Stephen’s team helps people in W.Va. rebuild 6 Carrie Newcomer to play benefit concert here 7 Local mission ‘trip’ offered for adults 7 What is essential is invisible 8 Meet the family ministry team 9 Canterbury Cathedral Choir visits this spring 11 Liturgical ministers recruitment and training 11 Farmers market begins 10th year 13 Needlepoint project is zipping along (you can help) 16