Skip to main content

Letters from the Land of Advent - Attentiveness

Congratulations to all of you at home enjoying your second snow day in a row.

Or, maybe I should put that another way.

My prayers are with you.

Snow days are wonderful gifts, and there's a reason why Barbara Brown Taylor speaks of them as our last cultural moment of collective sabbath.  When the call from the school comes, parents and children are released to spend a day enjoying good books, playing out in the snow, and watching a movie or two together.  An openness of heart proceeds from the openness in the schedule.  Besides, there's nothing better than the sights and sounds of sledding, boots by the entry-way and gloves and hats defrosting on the heating vents.

But, the second snow day can be a bit more ... shall we say, challenging.

On the second day, things can become a bit more testy.  All that freedom and unstructured play can turn into a lit bit of a mad house.  You can't help but feel like Carol Burnett playing Miss Hannigan in Annie.  Meanwhile, dishes start to pile up in the kitchen.  Soggy soaks and piles of clothes stand as accumulated nuisances.  About the time you realize you've got to make yet another meal for everyone or figure out how to get through the e-learning assignment, you (and everyone along with you) is about to lose your proverbial you know what.

Ah, that little taste of cabin fever!

The longer we spend with those we know and love well, the more likely we are to start seeing those little habits and indocycracies that can drive us up a wall.

Why is it you always leave the milk in the cereal bowl?

 How many times do I need to tell you to make your bed?

 Aren't you about down with your screen time today?

 By the end of the second snow day, a heavy familiarity has fallen upon the household.

Poet and writer, David Whyte was on Krista Tippet's On Being this past Sunday, and there was a line from their interview which begs to be retold here.

"Attentiveness," David said "is the discipline for familiarity."

Let that sink in.

Attentiveness is the discipline for familiarity.

I love it.  In any relationship, in any marriage, in any family, in any long-term activity of being with someone else, this moment will come.  Things will be familiar.  Boringly so.  Or frustratingly so.

In these moments we have a critical moment, a chance to either learn how to embrace the familiarity in a new way or grow inscensed by it all.  A stewing resentment is one discipline we can employ, letting small things build and build into large grievances.  Or, we can pick up the other discipline:  attentiveness.

Attentiveness brings us back to those around us and teaches us to see them again ... anew.  Attentiveness keeps us at the table with our family to hear the telling of this story in a different way.

This attentiveness is not a tuning out.  It's a tuning in to hear and see things a bit differently.

For the several days, I've been listening to Snow Patrol's new album Reworked on Spotify.  Many of the songs I've heard hundreds of times.  Run.  Chocolate.  Just Say Yes.  I've played them in my car, listened to them on long rides, and let them put me to sleep.

But, I had gotten familiar with them.  I started to drown them out.  Some of them, honestly, started to get on my nerves if I heard them come on and would switch the channel.

Now, though, here's this gift.  The same songs have been reworked, reimagined.  And I'm falling in love with them all over again.  I'm bringing a renewed attentiveness to the subjects.

Maybe the same can happen for our relationships.

The clothes will pile up today.  The laundry pile will only get bigger.

But maybe there's a way to listen for a different version of the song on this second snow day.  Or this Christmas season.

Good luck and know of my prayers.

~Wes 






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Acts 2:42-47 - Questions for Reflection & Study

This past Sunday, we took a look at Luke's first summary passage in the story of Acts:  chapter 2, verses 42-47.  Here, Luke is presenting a billboard of what the Church looks like at its best.  He is trying to convince Theophilus that Christianity is worth his attention.  The early Church captures what all of us are looking for, whether we know it or not.  This is a close community that truly cares for one another, where everyone truly is seen as a brother and sister, and where no one person is considered more or less important as the other.  Needs are being met.  There is joy in their fellowship.  Take a moment to think about a time in your life when you experienced the joy and blessing of a deep, loving community?  Where was it, and what made this community so different?  What role did you play in this community? Luke tells us the disciples "devoted themselves" to four essential practices.  The Greek word for "devoted" ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Touchdown Jesus

For the second consecutive year, I traveled up US 31 to South Bend, Indiana on a beautiful fall day. I traveled with Curtis Lawrence, and we went for the sole purpose of watching the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team take the field. Now, I must note that it was my childhood dream to attend Notre Dame. Even loftier, it was also my dream - like many young boys growing up in Indiana - to suit up for the Fighting Irish. Surprisingly - even with such hopes - I had never actually visited the campus. For the first thirty years of my life, I never set foot on one of the more storied and celebrated college campus and football meccas in America. That absence was broken, though, when I made that first trip up to South Bend last year. Let me tell you: even after all those years of waiting, the campus and football stadium at Notre Dame lived up to all the out-sized expectations I had. Like most places of prominence, Notre Dame Stadium really cannot be described through words. It is so...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Gifts of Austerity

I’ve had it.   The Canadian Geese finally pushed me over the edge.   That was my tipping point.   I was driving back to the church after running a few errands on my lunch hour, and there they were flying through the sky.   Steadily flying south in packs of ten and four and six. They were escaping what was feeling more and more like an existential play.   No Exit .   Waiting for Godot .     That sort of thing.   The sort of tale where you never really emerge.   You.   Just.   Wait. It’s been almost a year now since this whole COVID journey began, which seems both ridiculous and unreal.   There’s no possible way it hasn’t been a full year.   There’s no possible way we haven’t come up on the one-year anniversary of when they shut down the schools and we fumbled our way through our first on-line service.   There’s a word that captures where we are right now.   It’s not a fun word.   It’s a winter wor...
Post a Comment
Read more