Attentiveness – Page 16

Saaka and Dandora

The novitiate for the Congregation of Holy Cross in East Africa is located at Lake Saaka, a crater lake hidden by the rolling hills of rural Western Uganda. It is impossibly temperate and beautiful. Here, the men in formation will work, pray, and study for a year before taking first vows.

And, for many years, their next stop in formation was Dandora, a slum of Nairobi, Kenya. In Dandora, one hundred thousand people struggle to survive on four bleak square kilometers that border Nairobi’s largest dump. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, the air smells either strongly or faintly of burning garbage. Save for the sunrise and sunset, there is no natural beauty. Here, the religious who took vows at Lake Saaka, would continue their formation with pastoral work and theology studies.

Both Saaka and Dandora are places of sincere intensity. At Saaka, it is the intensity of witnessing the growth of one’s own inner life in a wildly abundant experience of God’s creation. In Dandora, it is the intensity of witnessing the visceral resilience, strength, and prayer of God’s people.

I have thought about these extremes for some time. They certainly defy clean interpretation. What remains clear to me, though, is that I have known religious of the Holy Cross who, because they have lived in both intensities, carry a profound capacity to witness to the unrelenting and merciful love of God.

Kennen Lernen

In German, the way to say “to meet” (as in, “good to meet you”) is actually a composite of two verbs: kennen lernen. Kennen means “to know” and lernen means “to learn.”

Fascinating, right? Truly meeting someone does, in fact, demand attentive receptivity so that we can learn how to know the person.

I do not know if this interpretation is implied by its etymology, but it is still a worthy reminder.

We have the opportunity to learn to know those around us every day, even those that we met, for the first time, long ago.

Enough

Managing a family’s financial future is a lifelong balance with a great many variables.

One central variable, that affects many others, is the variable of “enough.” At any given point in our lives, can I say if we have “enough?” Enough money. Enough living space. Enough stuff.

It is tricky to solve for “enough,” but it is worth the mental energy because when our answer for “enough” becomes clearer, so does our capacity to be generous.

Memento Senectus

Memento mori, latin for “remember your death,” is a powerful spiritual practice. When we recall that we are finite, we are freed to live with singular purpose and focus on the most important things.

Relatedly, I wonder what happens when we consider memento senectus, “remember your old age?”

God willing, we will reach old age and, during that time, our bodies and minds will probably work less well and the context of our days will have changed considerably.

When we consider this reality, what effect does it have on how we want to live today?

What Confers Status?

Here is a question that gets right to the heart of a community’s culture: Within this community, what confers status?

Put another way: You see those people at the top of the heap? Why do we have a collective understanding that those people are at the top?

I’ve been part of communities that have conferred status based on the following:

-Seniority

-Generosity and consistency

-Conspicuous performance of ideological purity

-Looking like other people regarded as high status

-Level of contribution

-Articulate confidence

-Athleticism

-Professional excellence

Getting clear on what confers status in a community helps us understand how it runs. That is a huge step toward understanding the culture and, therefore, gaining perspective on how you can help it to grow.

Sonder

Have you heard of the word sonder, meaning the experience of realizing that all other people have an interior life as rich and complex as one’s own?

Fascinatingly, it was coined in the past ten years, in an effort to name emotional experiences that currently lack a proper word in English.

Both the experience of sonder, as well as the effort to name complex emotions that lack easy articulation, functions to build our capacity for humility and insight, resulting in more compassionate communities.

Error Messages, Considered Curiously

When programming a web application, error messages constantly appear in the browser where the project is being built, displaying text describing that something is going wrong. (A file is missing. A typo broke part of the program. A module is missing. The server is misconfigured.)

Some error messages are clear. Some are difficult to decipher.

These messages are a constant part of the building experience, and so the programmer must make a constant choice. She can see the error as a chance to learn, to improve the project, to hone her skill. Or, she can let herself hate the error message and bear down in frustration each time a message appears.

One approach will lead to growth and the other will lead to painful frustration.

We encounter error messages, in life, all the time. Those things don’t go quite right based on our narratives about the world, in professional, personal, political, or social spheres.

Let us try to welcome these messages with a compassionate curiosity and generous engagement, and, when we fail, resolve to become curious about what keeps us from being able to do so.

One-Browser-Tab Time

When working on my computer, I am often guilty of having a comical number of browser tabs open at one time. Each tab represents a reminder to do something or an open loop I need to close. And the sheer number of tabs that are open keeps me from attending to any one task well.

The most important things (our most cherished relationships, time spent in prayer, dedicated generosity) deserve our single-minded attentiveness, as if it were the only browser tab open in our minds. Protecting this focused time is both tough and worth it.

Unexpected Gentleness

Here is one of my favorite stories from the writings of the Desert Fathers.

A novice is worried because the monk that he sits next to during the late prayer keeps falling asleep. He asks an older monk what he should do.

The master’s response? See that the sleeping monk is comfortable. Do not disturb him.

Often, we conceive of a “conversion experience” as necessarily startling or shocking. Many times, though, an experience of unexpected gentleness can be uniquely powerful and an enduring reason to believe.

Anticipate Turbulence

Last week, our older son and I flew on an airplane. As we were about to take off, the pilot explained where on the trip we might experience turbulence and how to prepare ourselves.

This is an outstanding exercise for our personal and professional lives. Anticipating turbulence with loved ones, in counselling, and in spiritual direction can enable our artful response.

And yes, there is turbulence for which we cannot prepare. Knowing this, we can spend the time in silence, cultivating solitude and trust, so that we have the interior resources we need when a challenge arises.

Anticipating turbulence helps us respond instead of react when strain enters our lives.