Episode Transcript  

One

Image of the Soul

We’re beginning a series on a simple truth: love takes sustained attention. Friendship grows when we give someone time, listen carefully, and stay with them long enough to understand them. This is true of our relationships with other people, and it is true of our relationship with God. Prayer is friendship with God, and friendship takes attention. But much of the digital world is designed to seize our attention and keep us scrolling, training us in constant distraction and undermining the sustained attention that love requires. But first, we need to understand something: what we give our attention to forms us.

You may have heard the Latin phrase tabula rasa. It means “blank tablet.” In ancient times, people wrote on tablets covered with wax. They used a stylus to press letters into the surface. To use the tablet again, they smoothed the wax, erasing the old writing and leaving it ready to receive new impressions.

Think about that wax. Whatever you pressed into it left a mark. This gives us a useful image of the soul. What we read, watch, listen to, and think about leaves impressions within us. We carry something of those experiences even after we close the book, turn off the screen, or finish the conversation. And the way we allow something to impress itself upon our soul is by giving it our attention.

What we attend to leaves its mark on us. So we need to ask: What am I giving my attention to, and what impression is it leaving on my soul?

Two

We Become What We Attend to

Recently, I was reading The Last Green Valley, about the Martel family’s escape from Stalin’s Soviet Union. I became so absorbed in their experience that I finally had to stop reading. I was beginning to wonder when the Soviet secret police were going to knock at my door! Think about that. I was safe in my own home. But as I followed their story, their fears began to become my fears. I hadn’t decided to become afraid. Simply by paying attention, I had allowed their experience to leave its impression on me.

You probably experienced this with a movie. You know the characters are actors and the story is fictional. Yet you begin to fear what they fear, hope for what they hope for, and grieve when they lose someone. You might even find yourself wanting a character to get away with something you know is wrong. You haven’t deliberately chosen those feelings. By giving the story your attention, you have allowed it to influence your thoughts, stir your emotions, and even affect your decisions. When the movie ends, those impressions can remain with you.

You give something your attention, and it leaves an impression on your soul. The mind is passively conformed to what it thinks about. Now consider what happens when we dwell on the same kinds of things day after day, year after year. Those impressions deepen. They shape how we think, what we feel, and eventually what we choose. Which means the kind of person you become will largely depend on what you watch, listen to, and choose to think about.

Three

If we think about noble things; if we think about petty, base things

The kind of person you become will largely depend on what you choose to think about. This is why it’s so unbelievably important to be intentional about what you give your attention to; what you think about. If you spend your time indulging in what is bad, taking pleasure in it, or getting caught up in idle curiosity about it or filling your mind with what is superficial, you are going to make your soul bad or superficial.

If you spend your time reading or watching or talking about, for instance, a trial about a terrible crime, that’s going to make your soul ugly. If you spend your time indulging in sexual images and fantasy, that’s going to make your soul base and foul. If you spend your time online following angry people saying nasty things about each other on every controversial political issue that comes up, that’s going to make your soul angry and nasty.

So what are you supposed to think about? What things should you press into the wax of your soul?

St. Paul tells us very plainly, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil 4:8).

Four

Deep vs. Superficial Impressions

Thinking about the soul as impressionable wax is helpful for another reason. Because not only does wax take on the shape of whatever you press into. But it’s also true that the deeper you press, the deeper and longer-lasting is the impression in the wax. And that’s true for the soul as well. If we can attend to something for a long time, if we can think about it deeply, it will impress itself deeply into our soul.

We can form our minds and our feelings in a lasting, profound way. Or, we can simply flit from topic to topic, from interest to interest, in a completely superficial and transitory way. That’s what is meant by “scratching the surface,” where the wax at the top of the soul is only slightly disrupted, and down below, there’s just nothing going on.

There are more and more people like this. People with absolutely no depth, no capacity for reflection, no capacity for profound insights or deep feelings. We’re doing it to ourselves. Letting ourselves be distracted and bouncing from one idea to the next without taking the time to study, reflect, and refine our understanding or skill.

The soul starts out as a tabula rasa, a blank slate, but it isn’t meant to stay that way. And if we’ve allowed ourselves to just go from one superficial entertainment to another, or even one superficial spiritual insight to another, we will be responsible before God for the resulting shallowness of our souls.

Five

Resolution

The point of this meditation is that we want to be able to focus on good things, and focus on them deeply.

So here are two resolutions: First of all, take one thing that you give your attention to that isn’t good. Maybe a particular kind of news, or commentary, or entertainment. And make the resolution to cut it out of your life, so that it stops forming your soul.

Secondly, pick a book of a saint’s writings or a book-length biography about a saint or a good spiritual book. And resolve to read it through every word. Like: Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset, My Heart Will Triumph by Mirjana Sol, or Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI. Then you’ll be committing to a good thing, and committing to it for an extended time, so that hopefully it leaves a deep impression.

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