I’m not very good at paying attention. My wife would say you either are paying attention or you aren’t. “Not very good” isn’t a category for attention. At least I think that’s what she says. I’m usually not listening.
“Paying” is an interesting word to describe attention. It’s a costly language—like love. It takes discipline and work, comes with costs and obligations.
The French philosopher Simone Weil once wrote, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”[1] I’m not very good at prayer, either, if you are wondering. Same reason. I have mixed attention.
Part of me wants to defend myself. I tend to see in black and white. But I think in color. My thought life is vivid—imagining, scheming, dreaming, planning. “This is who I am!” I want to exclaim. I’m cerebral, academic, imaginative. But I’m also smart enough to know God made a colorful world, full of life and wonder. I often miss it. I know the world is worthy of all the attention we can afford to give it.
Sometimes, I give God my attention. I pay attention. But, like I said, I’m bad at attention. I walk in the woods, and I see green things. Shrubs, I call them. I know a fern when I see one. But what kind? An eagle fern? An ostrich fern? Horsetails? Leatherleaf? I don’t know. It’s green, and it looks familiar. The green things sort of blend together. But the green things also have names. They have a heritage and history—in a particular place and through their genome pattern. One way to get to know the world is to get to know the names of its inhabitants.
Every so often, I sneak away to Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in the low country of South Carolina, where I can cultivate attention with the masters. This year, it’s the start of my sabbatical from teaching, so a change of pace will be good. Monks, through their prayers, create this sacred ground, a peaceful calm in the midst of a crazy world. Pulling in under the Spanish moss hanging from trees over the driveway, this land seems sanctified.
Central to the monastic commitment is stability, which is a promise to stay in a particular place. But stability is more than stubborn resolve. Stability also means a continual change of heart in the same place. The goal is growth. In Blue Sapphire of the Mind, a book building a contemplative ecology, Douglas Christie writes, “This commitment to a particular place, to a deepening awareness of the life and spirit of this place as ground of one’s entire contemplative life, is one of the distinctive contributions the monastic traditions has to offer to the larger task of learning to see and dwell in the world as a sacred place.”[2] I’ve come to the monastery to meet with God through hours of prayer. I like God in the sanctuary. But sometimes he leaks out into the world in unexpected ways. Like a monk, he may want to meet me in the overflow of his creation, in the place and with the things he created. We’ll see. I’ll have to pay attention.
One morning, I went on a walk looking for God in the things He made. God gave our first ancestor, Adam, the task to name the world. I wonder what that was like, the start of names and language. I think I would give many names that sounds like gobblygook and its derivatives. Animals pass by Adam, and he gives them a name fitting to who they are. I’m looking for names. I’m trying to get out of my colorful head and into the wonderful world. It’s summertime, so I’m expecting to see some pops of color and brightness. But all I see is green. Green is good, but the green is bleeding together. Green tress. Green grass. Green bushes.
Up the hill is a large living oak tree with hanging Spanish moss. I’ve loved Spanish moss since childhood trips to Charleston to visit my aunt. There’s something ancient, haunting, and beautiful about these dangly wisps. I pass by a few hydrangea bushes. They have one or two bluish-purple globes popping out. (I only know what these flowers are called because these are the flowers my wife chose for our wedding arrangements. There’s a pretty steep learning curve between the name of this flower and all other flowers).
I journey on in my hunt. I feel like God should be more apparent, more readily available.
Then, I gaze to discover a few white flowers underneath a palm tree. Lilies, perhaps. No. Geraniums? I have no clue. I’m an idiot of flower types. I look it up later: they’re scarlet rosemallows—a type of hibiscus. I was way off. There are hundreds of potential blooms—a few of them are on the precipice and shining green, and many of them are brown and withered and exposing their seeds to the world. These seed pods look something like a cotton flower without the white fluff.
Most of the blooms have come and gone, offering their seeds up to new beginnings next year. Flowers come and gone. But these seeds promise new life in withered pods. Perhaps some will be carried away or eaten by some rodent or bird. Maybe some will go into the earth and offer new gifts next year.
Death seems all around in the summer heat, but five of these scarlet rosemallows are shining in white radiance. The flowers have five petals with a single white stigma sticking out, looking for bees and butterflies. A fluorescent green butterfly lands on the flower’s ovary. It’s strange that flowers and plants have names of mammalian reproductive organs: male parts and female parts.
The leaves are arrayed with five points—it kind of looks like a marijuana leaf, to be honest (I mean, from what I hear—not that I have the experience). Five blooms with five petals and five pointed leaves. I try not to make much of this numerology, but my ancient ancestors may have. They saw the world charged with meaning. Five was the number for the human. We have five fingers on each hand, same for toes on feet. Five senses. Five appendages in the Vitruvian, proportionate man: two legs, two arms, one head. There are five bleeding wounds on the crucified Christ (hands, feet, side). The first five books of the Bible attributed to Moses have a name: the Torah. There are five pillars into the Tabernacle and Temple representing the stability and strength of the priesthood. Jesus takes five loaves (and two fish) to make a meal for five thousand people. There’s a balance and harmony in five. There’s redemption in five. Maybe God is wanting to communicate something. Maybe I’m making it up. But for a moment, I felt like the earth could give way to heaven, as if the divine glory was shining through a patch of mostly dead flowers.
I return to this group of flowers over the day to see what they look like. In the morning, the blooms still seem scared to peek out from behind their closed doors. Eventually they relax, almost as if they fall out. They come to spread out their arms in the warm noonday sun. Peace at last. The big, proud, relaxed petals close tight in on themselves at night as if they are getting scared of darkness.
I went back the next day in the late afternoon. I discovered that I missed two blooms. Seven now. The number of completion and perfection. Seven days in a week. Seven lampstands in the temple. Seven unites the spiritual (three) with the material (four). There are seven petitions in the “Our Father” prayer Jesus taught us. Seven days in a week. I return after dinner and notice three other blooms tucked away in the garden. Ten. Ten commandments. On another visit, I see a bluebird fly away from its perch on a flower. Luke Bell reports that natural blue is a rarity on earth, and thus is the color correlated with contemplation.[3] There’s a mystery to blue. It invites wonder, like the blue sky of the heavens. Here, God seems to give me a bluebird to remind me: pay attention. Wonder here.
The next evening, I returned to check on these precious friends. I arrived and found all my blooms gone. Missing in action. Only two remain. It turns out scarlet rosemallows only last one day. Here today, gone tomorrow. The Psalmist prays to be taught to number his days that he may get a heart of wisdom (Ps 90.12). These flowers days are numbered at 1. Fleeting. Had I not paid attention, I would have missed their short lives.
Jesus tells a parable about flowers in the field. Consider the lilies. Jesus invites us to pay attention. God clothes the lilies of the field which are here one day and gone the next. Yet God notices the day hibiscus. Aren’t you more valuable, O man? Why am I anxious about my accomplishments or even my basic necessities?
I often think I don’t want to busy God with my concerns. He seems to have better, more important things going on. I don’t want to be high maintenance. But if God cares for the one-day flowers, perhaps I can trust that he cares for me in all my trivialities. If I’m going to write about the world, I better start paying attention to it. To discover presents, I need to be present.
I continue my walk, more exploring and meandering. Up the hill is an overlook of the James River that forms the monastery’s boundary. There’s a bench there where I pause. Attention and prayer.
At the next valley, I see a new garden. I remember seeing some excavation here a few years ago on my last visit. I see a sign: the truth and reconciliation garden. I’ll gander across.
I come to the first post. I realize I’m entering into a somber place. This is not a sign but a station, the first of seven. Suffering can be transformative, it says. This comes as a shock to my modern ears. Suffering sucks. Suffering seems like a blip on my otherwise good, well-adjusted, fine life. Life would be good if it weren’t for suffering. So grit your teeth and bear it. Go through it as fast as you can. Suffering seems meaningless. But suffering as transformation? No thanks. Yet the invitation remains: what I am about to encounter, through entering into others’ suffering, can transform my life.
I head down the stairs and come into the valley. I cross a small ravine and arise out of it where a path meets me. To my right is a bronze statue called, “Thy Father’s Hand” which is a 6-foot-tall hand holding a crucified Jesus, wounds and all.
To my left is a stately brick enclave where the Laurens family is buried. Connecting them is a cement path shaped like an infinity sign, two circles that connect in the middle. I travel in time to the graveyard through the winding path.
The Laurens family owned this land and the people on it from 1724 till 1792. Henry Laurens was a Founding Father and colonel in the Revolutionary War. He was an aide of George Washington and eventually served as diplomat to the Netherlands. He was captured at sea on one of his voyages and was exchanged for General Cornwallis at the end of the Revolutionary War.
In the shadow of this bricked interior where the rich are buried, I see 15-20 orange landscape flags—the kind you use to mark an electric fence. I notice them without any coherent pattern or shape.
Later I overhear one of the retreatants reveal that these orange flags are the unmarked resting places for unnamed slaves.
Early in the Bible, there is a story of two brothers: Cain and Abel, the offspring of Adam and Eve. According to the Judeo-Christian story, the first children encounter conflict over an offering of food and flock. Cain brings his fruit from the ground as a sacrifice to God; Abel brings the firstborn of the flock. God accepts Abel’s sacrifice but has no regard for Cain’s offering. Pages and pages speculate why God had no regard for the latter—maybe it was a heart posture, maybe Abel developed the creative technology of animal husbandry while Cain was bitterly grinding away his own body, maybe it was the quality of sacrifice God regarded—who knows. But this conflict causes Cain to rise against Abel and kill him—Cain’s jealousy and anger overwhelm him.
Soon after, God calls out to Cain, “Where is your brother?” Cain responds with a rhetorical question back to God: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” It’s a probing question that every generation has struggled to answer. Are we responsible to those around us? To the one who can’t get their life together? To our poor neighbors? To our black and brown neighbors? To our food and flock neighbors? Where does our responsibility end? Are we our brother’s keeper—even brother sun and sister wolf?
God says that Abel’s blood cries out from the ground. We can’t cover our negligence. A man dies; the ground cries out. We’re inattentive; the land notices.
Wendell’s Berry whole corpus reminds us of this fact: The way we treat the world is the way we treat each other (and vice versa). European colonists stripped Africa of human bodies that we called resources, and soon after, we stripped the land of life in the name of resources. We pillage the land; we pillage bodies. It’s a reciprocal effect that has generational consequences.
I don’t mean to suggest that one day I stop noticing scarlet rosemallows, and the next day, I start killing people. But attention is decisive. It determines our lives.
William Cavanaugh praises Pope Francis’ use of “integral ecology” in Laudato Si’. This term recognizes that the “earth cannot be separated from care for the human person. The throwaway culture that is trashing the earth is the same culture that is discarding human persons, and the only way to restore the earth is also to heal the distorted human desires that lead to exploitation and exclusion. We must not pit a human-centered approach against an earth-centered approach; the only healing approach is a God-centered approach, one in which humans, animals, plants, and all material things find their meaning in the loving God who creates and sustains them in harmony.” When we approach the world as gifts from God—both people and plants, animal bodies and humans, soil and soul—we see the world filled with meaning and beauty. It’s worthy of all the attention we can get give it.
These American ancestors who lived on the Mepkin plantation determined that there are some graves worth knowing about (the white, wealthy ones), and there are some disposable bodies lost to history (the black, enslaved ones). It wasn’t their responsibility. They weren’t their brother’s keeper. Some brothers weren’t worthy of attention.
Midway through the small infinity walk, there’s another station called “Tabula Rasa”: blank slate. It’s an image to “create our own shared futures.” That sounds nice. I think we have the capability, the responsibility to reimagine and change trajectories from history. At least, I hope we do. I hope we can grow to be more attentive and more responsible and more loving. But I don’t think tabula rasa is quite right. We never have a blank slate. We are always formed and nurtured or deformed and neglected.
I’m sure the monks did not know about this history when they were gifted this property in 1959. They didn’t have a blank slate. They had an inheritance—for good and ill. Somehow, “not knowing” about these graves isn’t an adequate excuse. It may be true, but it doesn’t help. Ignorance is not an option; re-membering, reconciliation is all we’ve got. They chose to be their brother’s keeper, to be attentive, and to care.
I imagine this work of remembering only complicated these monk’s lives. After stumbling upon these unmarked graves, wouldn’t it be easier to ignore, to move on, to sweep it under the proverbial rug?
But the monks looked. They paid attention. They took responsibility. And attention and responsibility cost.
On my way back across the valley, I arrive at the seventh station. “Christians are those who bear the sins and injustices of others.” A quote from Thomas Merton.
I’m processing all this as I’m sitting for lunch (also known as dinner in the monastic schedule)—attention, responsibility, my own complicity. The dining hall is separated between monks and retreatants. Over the loudspeaker, I hear Father Joe start reading from Benedict’s Rule about abbots and priors and authority. Standard fare. Then I hear him announce, “Today we are starting a new book, Jesus and the Disinherited.” The opening words ring out: “The significance of the religion of Jesus to people who stand with their backs against the wall has always seemed to me to be crucial…. Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically, and therefore effectively, with the issues of discrimination and injustice on the basis of race, religion and national origin?” Why is it? It’s a good question. Why don’t we notice injustices around us? Why don’t we do more to care for our neighbors—animate and inanimate? Why do we not care about the world?
These are massive questions with big implications. All I know how to begin is to return to my scarlet rosemallow and its fleeting life. To pay attention.
Image Via: GetArchive
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Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, 117. ↑
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Douglas Christie, The Blue Sapphire of the Mind, 12. ↑
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Luke Bell, The Meaning of Blue, 40.
