ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
June 11, 2023
As strange as this may sound, my mantra lately has been: Be intentional about attentiveness. If you are already attentive, it sort of seems obvious that adding intentionality is overkill. Yet with that said, I can appear attentive and even convince myself I am attentive, yet all my energy has gone into thinking about appearance for others and convincing myself. And along the way, little or no energy has gone into actually being attentive. I’m sure many of you reading this are attentive to your very core, and I celebrate that skill. For the rest of us, being intentional about attentiveness is a learned practice that requires lots of practice. Generally, we need to be attentive to the stories of those whose experiences of life are very different from our own. We need to be attentive to the fears behind the hateful rhetoric that we hear from others. We need to be attentive to signs of hurt and injury behind the facade of “Life is great!” In Proverbs 2:2-3, we read:
Turn your ear toward wisdom,
and stretch your mind toward understanding.
Call out for insight,
and cry aloud for understanding.
O Sacred Wisdom, O Source of Life and Light, teach me once again both the importance of attentiveness and the actual skill itself. There is a world immediately around me that I do not understand, yet love is demonstrated in the intentional work of listening and learning, awakening and true awareness. Amen.
