The Slow Way: Attention and Imagination
Are we paying close enough attention to look with the eyes of reverence, to make space in our imaginations for an image of God that stretches beyond our small experiences?
This past week I sat on the floor with a circle of middle schoolers asking them what they imagine when they think of God. I figure most of us who were raised in church in the 70s, 80s and 90s can’t help but immediately think of a big white man in the sky when we picture God, even if that’s not the image we want to carry with us. I was delighted when I asked my 7th and 8th grade crew what they imagined and found their answers to be anything but the old white man in the sky: a green vapor, light, love, and even a shapeshifting Person! Our view of God is shaped by our life experiences--stories we’ve heard, books we’ve read, pictures we encountered, and what adults taught us in our most formative years. And, thankfully our holy books actually offer our imagination something broader and more creative than we usually expect.
I printed out verses from the Old Testament, the Psalms, and the New Testament, and passed one to each student, inviting each of them to draw God as the passage described.
They drew pictures of flames, of a giant stone, of giant legs standing between trees, a person in the dark holding a flashlight (God was the flashlight), a sign that said silence and peace, and light shining out from a massive mass of rock which represented God passing by in Exodus 33
The truth is that the images we carry usually end up carrying us. Some of us are terrorized by our early visions of Angry God who lives far away. Some of us have found ourselves held and supported by the possibility that God is something different—a mother hen who gathers her chicks, an eagle who builds and protects her nest, a safe place when the rest of the world feels dangerous, the flashlight in our hand lighting up the dark path, just in time.. And that’s what I hoped my middle school friends took away from our lesson—what we imagine when we imagine God matters because our imaginations shape the ways we live in the world.
This week I also read “The Feminine Way to Wisdom,” an article from David Brooks about three Jewish women whose lives were taken in the Holocaust, and whose generosity and courage in the midst of their own suffering was made possible by two things—imagination and the spiritual practice of paying attention.
Etty Hillesum explained her experience of faith this way: “There really is a deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there too. But more often stones and grit block the well, and God is buried beneath. Then He must be dug out again.”
She described the “mighty eternal current that is life,” and spoke of a feeling that sparked inside her, even in the misery of the concentration camp:
“The misery here is quite terrible, and yet, late at night, when the day has slunk away into the depths behind me, I often walk with a spring in my step along the barbed wire. And then, time and again, it soars straight from my heart—I can’t help it, that’s just the way it is, like some elementary force—the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent, and that one day we shall be building a whole new world.”
David Brooks asks the question: What transformed these women? What allowed them to experience the kind of force that can offer the hope of building a “whole new world”? Hillesum’s biographer, Patrick Woodhouse, answers that Hillesum was formed by one in thing in particular: the practice of “paying deep attention.”
I left my youth group lesson thinking about how the only way we transform the images we carry of God, the ones that are not life-giving, is to pay attention to the images we want to hold of God. What we give our attention to, is after all, what we give our imagination to.
How many birds have passed me by this week without my noticing? How many lights have I switched on and off? How many flickers of candle wick? Each one a metaphor for a God who is beyond my imagination and still profoundly present. Am I paying attention to the way God’s spirit shows up in this world?
Am I creating space in my life to “pay deep attention” to the work of Love in the world, allowing my hope to grow from it?
As David Brooks writes,
“The quality of attention you bring to the world determines what you see in the world, and ultimately what you do in the world. She who only looks inward will only find chaos, and she who looks outward with the eyes of critical judgment will only find flaws. But she who looks with the eyes of compassion and understanding will see complex souls, suffering and soaring, navigating life as best they can. And if she sees others rightly, with the eyes of reverence, she will begin to treat others differently, with generosity and understanding.”
Are we paying close enough attention to look with the eyes of reverence, to make space in our imaginations for an image of God that stretches beyond our small experiences and into the “eternal current” of God at work in the world?
A Slow Practice
This week I’m inviting you to join me in a daily bedtime practice. We are going to draw! That may sound terrible to you or wonderful. I know that I am not a natural drawer, and I get embarrassed for anyone to see my sketches. Whether you’re like me and avoid drawing, or are a natural, I believe that drawing is one simple way to slow down and pay attention.
So here we go: Leave a sketchbook or notebook beside your bed. Every night before you sleep (maybe before you pick up the novel you’re reading, or start scrolling your phone), draw a picture of one moment you experienced that day. Before you draw, maybe you want to pray: “Spirit help me see where you were present in my life today.” As you draw look for the presence of goodness, light, or joy in your moments.
When we pay deep attention, we discover where God dwells. After you’ve finished your drawing, thank God for dwelling there, in that moment you’ve noticed.
End with this prayer: God, beyond my imagining, teach me to pay deep attention, that in watching and waiting for your presence I might find you have been beside me all along.
A Slow Note:
Just fyi for you faithful Saturday morning readers who didn’t see anything in your inbox yesterday, I’m finding our Saturday time more and more difficult in this season of our family life. So, I’m moving the Slow Way Letter to Friday mornings. Start looking in your inbox on Fridays and I’ll do my best to be right there waiting for you. Thanks for your patience as I navigate this new school year!
Julian of Norwich discerned three properties in her vision of the thing no bigger than a hazelnut representing all that is made: “In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God keeps it.”
I didn't write this but try to remember it when paying attention.
Instagram has its own troubles/downsides, but one of the things I so appreciate about bogging/instagramming is how they encouraged me to notice things. I notice light. Color. Flowers. Candles. The texture of fabric. Funny signs or moments of joy or beauty. After years of posting I take time to mark simple pleasures and sorrows. The change of seasons. Etc etc. in a more intentional way than before. I'm thankful for that part of social media. Looking forward to this practice. Thank you!