Your Attention Please?

Our attention is our most precious possession.

It has been said that, “Whatever has our attention has us.” And this is true. Capturing and holding our attention is worth billions of dollars to companies in our digital age.

I read recently that to spend one day in New York City is to be exposed to roughly 10,000 discreet attempts to grab our attention. Even in a more natural setting, our ability to perceive or take in the amount of information within reach of our senses is quite limited. One estimate is that it would take our minds 80 years to attend to all the bits of information coming to us in 60 seconds.

Our attention is precious not only because it is for sale in the marketplace and because it can only attend to few of the myriad possibilities available to us in any moment, but because it is a source of joy. What?

When we give our full attention to someone or something we become fully present with them, and these are moments we feel fully alive. I carry many memories and pictures of this with me. My mom, an artist, in her white painting shirt covered with colorful smears, at her art table. My (then) five year old daughter in a party hat, drawing something so intently she did not notice we snapped her photo. Last Wednesday at City Hall in St. Paul, dozens of neighbors speaking to city officials with clarity and passion for more humane policies for unhoused neighbors. Any time I have experienced either giving or receiving full attention to or from someone.

The joy of gathered, focused attention is not the same as pleasure, though often it may be pleasurable. It is a gift to be absorbed in something good; a sense of transcendence while also rooted in the here and now.

Yeshua tells a story about a merchant in search of a single pearl of great value. He searches until he finds it, and when he does he goes and sells all he has in order to purchase it--with joy!

It is one image of what he calls the kingdom of heaven. It is like that. For what we truly are seeking, what deserves our full and constant attention, is no one thing, activity, or person, but may include all sorts of them. The pearl of great price is the grace and gift of being an authentic human soul, transformed in Love. There is no greater joy.

It is not something to obtain; but to receive. It is worth everything, for it is the worth in everything. It is the experience of Divine Presence, Eternal Life and Love, as our own presence in all that we do.

And it only grows according to the attention we give to this precious pearl, perhaps while holding a crayon, a microphone, spatula, a hammer, a gaze, a blade of grass, or a hand...