The spiritual practice of paying attention

Do you hear Lady Wisdom calling? Can you hear Madame Insight raising her voice? She's taken her stand at First and Main, at the busiest intersection. Right in the city square where the traffic is thickest, she shouts, "You - I'm talking to all of you, everyone out here on the streets!

"God sovereignly made me - the first, the basic - before he did anything else. I was brought into being a long time ago, well before Earth got its start. I arrived on the scene before Ocean, yes, even before Springs and Rivers and Lakes. Before Mountains were sculpted and Hills took shape, I was already there, newborn; Long before God stretched out Earth's Horizons, and tended to the minute details of Soil and Weather, And set Sky firmly in place, I was there. When he mapped and gave borders to wild Ocean, built the vast vault of Heaven, and installed the fountains that fed Ocean, When he drew a boundary for Sea, posted a sign that said "no trespassing," and then staked out Earth's foundations, I was right there with him, making sure everything fit. Day after day I was there, with my joyful applause, always enjoying his company, Delighted with the world of things and creatures, happily celebrating the human family. (Proverbs 8:1-4; Proverbs 8:22-31 (The Message)

I invite you to read this passage from Proverbs as a starting point and inspiration for a spiritual practice that is much neglected in our frantic, overly-electronic, preoccupied world: paying attention to creation in order to deepen our relationship with God. Quiet time. Listening. Being observant. Being. (Not "being" on our cell phones, but just being.) Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book on spiritual practices, An Altar in the World, is helpful with this practice. She reminds us that classes, meetings, and even worship services in sanctuaries are not the only (or perhaps even primary) way we might connect with God. Taylor writes evocatively of twelve different ways that we might encounter God in our everyday lives, in the embodied lives we lead, including practices like walking on the earth (groundedness), paying attention (reverence), getting lost (wilderness), and waking up to God (vision). "Wisdom," she writes, "is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails. Wise people do not have to be certain what they believe before they act. They are free to act, trusting that the practice itself will teach them what they need to know….Wisdom atrophies if it is not walked on a regular basis." And yet she clearly doesn't expect us to take her literally; that is, an excellent form of practice is attentive inaction: "The easiest practice of reverence I know," she writes, "is simply to sit down somewhere outside, preferably near a body of water, and pay attention for at least twenty minutes. It is not necessary to take on the whole world at first. Just take the three square feet of earth on which you are sitting, paying close attention to everything that lives within that small estate."

adapted from the website Weekly Seeds