Episode Transcript  

One

We Are Training Ourselves to Leave

This is a series of meditations on attention. Why attention? Because I want you to reach transforming union with God, contemplation in this life and heaven in the next. To reach this goal, we need the power of attention. St. John of the Cross says, “Since God as the giver communes with individuals through a simple loving knowledge, they as the receivers, commune with God through a simple loving knowledge or attention.” Living Flame 3:34.

So one of the most important abilities we need to develop and protect is the ability to give our sustained attention to God. But the same is true of every relationship. If we want a great relationship with someone, we have to be able to give them sustained attention.

Here is the problem: much of the digital environment is training us to do exactly the opposite. News headlines train us to ask, What’s next? What happened now? Social media trains us to scroll, glance, react, and move on. Short-form video gives us something new every few seconds. Notifications interrupt whatever currently has our attention. Eventually, we carry this pattern into ordinary life. Next. Next. Next. We become uncomfortable staying with one thing when nothing new is happening.

Here is the crucial point: we aren’t merely experiencing distraction; we are practicing distraction. Repeated behavior forms habits. The digital world is training us to leave. But love requires us to stay.

Two

What Does It Mean to Give Someone Your Attention?

Teresa taught me this when she was five. I would ask what she wanted to do, and she would say, “We’re going to talk.” She would make me sit on the couch, take my face in her hands, turn my head toward her, and then she would talk. I would listen, and we would remain there a long time. It was wonderful. She was training me to give my attention.

First, we turn toward the other person. We direct our senses toward them, especially sight and hearing. We look at them. We listen. And we direct our thinking toward what they are saying or doing. I can sit three feet from someone while my attention is a million miles away.

Second, we stay with them. It isn’t enough to turn toward someone for a moment. We have to sustain the direction of our senses and thought. When something else competes for our attention, we remain with, or return to, the person. And why do we look, listen, think, and remain?

So that we can receive the person. I hear not merely sounds but meaning. I notice expression and tone. I try to understand what the person is communicating. So attention is very simple: Turn toward the person. Stay with them. Receive.

Three

Attention Is Essential to Love

When I give you my attention, I give myself to you: my time, thought, interest, concern, and presence. For these minutes, I am choosing you rather than the thousand other things that could occupy me. Genuine attention communicates, “You are important. You matter to me.”

So attention is a gift of self. But at the same time, attention allows me to receive you. By attending to you, I can know, understand, love, and care for you and receive what you want to share. Love involves both giving and receiving. I give myself to you, and I receive you. That is why the crisis of attention is so serious. If we lose the ability to sustain attention, we weaken our ability to give ourselves to others and receive them. We weaken our capacity for relationship and love. And if this is true of our relationships with other people, it is even more important in our relationship with God.

Four

Prayer Is Giving Our Attention to God

Christian prayer begins with God’s initiative. God reveals Himself. God speaks. God gives grace. Ultimately, in Christ, God gives Himself to us. The question is whether we are attentive enough to receive what God is giving. In prayer, we turn away from competing things and direct our attention toward God. We listen to Him through His Word. We think about God, His actions, and His truth. We speak with Him. Our will responds in love. And then comes the difficult part for people being trained by the digital world: We stay. We remain with the point that struck us. We think about it. We speak with God about it. We listen. We love. That is discursive meditation: thinking something through with God. And when our attention wanders, we return.

Eventually, St. John of the Cross teaches that discursive prayer becomes simpler. Instead of continually producing thoughts, the soul becomes capable of a simple, receptive, loving attention to God. We no longer need constantly to do something in God’s presence. We can simply remain with Him in love and receive.

So how do we recover this ability to stay?

Five

Meditation Trains Us to Pay Attention—and Therefore to Love

The best way to strengthen our power of attention is to practice meditation every day. Think about what we do in discursive meditation. We come to Jesus. We listen to His Word. Something strikes us. We think in order to understand. We talk with the Lord about it. We apply it to our lives and form a concrete resolution.

What have we been doing throughout this whole process? Sustaining our attention on God. Of course, we become distracted. Thirty seconds into prayer, suddenly I’m thinking about breakfast, work, or an email. Then I think, I’m terrible at prayer. No. The return itself is part of the training. Notice. Return. Remain. When your mind wanders again, return again. Every return strengthens the habit of directing our attention where we have chosen rather than allowing every stimulus to decide where our attention goes.

And this practice should overflow into every relationship. If I learn every day to turn toward God, listen, remain, return when distracted, receive, and respond in love, I am practicing the very capacities I need with the people God has entrusted to me. When my spouse speaks, I can put everything else aside, look at her, listen, and remain. The attention we practice with God teaches us to attend to one another. So today, practice sustained attention. When your attention wanders during prayer, return it to God. And when someone you love speaks to you, put everything else aside. Look at them. Listen. Remain.

We become more capable of love by becoming more capable of attention. Prayer teaches us to remain with God, so that we become more capable of remaining with the people He has given us to love.

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