Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023
Paying attention
diane harvey
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I was grateful for Ashley Wade’s recent reflection on noticing joy. Because I had been thinking a lot lately about paying attention. For one, because a group I’m a part of has invited us to pay attention to signs of God’s mercy throughout Lent so we might see Christ in new ways this Easter. But the other reason I’ve been thinking about paying attention is that I recently noticed something I had missed for 17 years. For the last 17 years I have walked almost daily, and often twice a day at a beautiful park with paths along the ocean and in the woods. Granted, I usually walk at dawn so some of the scenery is shadowed; and often I can be distracted by my prayer as I walk, or I’m in conversation with a friend. But I take the same route most of the time. So I was very dismayed when a week ago, I saw for the first time an old, abandoned fire hydrant on the edge of the woods bordering the road out of the park. The red had faded to a pale pink and I wondered what was its original use. Was it used for the hotel in the early part of the 20th century for summer visitors who wanted to enjoy the Maine seacoast? Or was it part of military operations when the fort was used in World Wars I and II? My bigger question, however, was why had I missed the hydrant all these years? And it made me start reflecting on what else I don’t notice. I have always thought I pay attention pretty well, but perhaps while I think I’m paying attention, my mind and heart are also distracted by thoughts of what I need to do that day, or by worries and regrets. I may be noticing the beauty of my surroundings, but I don’t really see what is before me. I don’t look with my whole self.
Do you know the poignant scene in the last act of Thorton Wilder’s play, Our Town? Emily, a young mother, has died and she’s up on the hill at the cemetery and begs the stage manager to let her go back to Grover’s Corners for one last look. The stage manager tries to dissuade her but she insists and reluctantly he takes her back to experience the day of her 10th birthday. But not even halfway through the morning Emily begs to return to the cemetery saying: “I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t take time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back up to the hill to my grave. But first, one more look. Oh, Mother, just look at me one minute, one minute as if you really saw me. Oh earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you! Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it –every, every minute?” The stage manager shakes his head. “No, Emily,” he says. “The saints and poets, maybe, they do some.”
Dear friends, I believe that you and I are the saints and poets. And living is all about paying attention, realizing life as we live it, every, every minute. Paying attention to the good and the not so good, the major stuff and the insignificant, trusting that God is with us in all of it. I will pray for you to notice life in a new way, and I would love it if you would pray the same for me.