Attentiveness – Page 4

Are We in Love With God’s Creation?

Do we love creation with the same love with which God loves creation?

That is a very high standard, an exquisite opportunity, and a grace for which we can pray daily.

Behind the Behavior

When someone does something that really winds us up, what do we learn if we get curious and ask: “What’s behind the behavior?”

If the behavior is particularly perplexing, chances are there’s fear behind it.

When we realize this, and realize our own capacity for fear, it becomes easier to get close enough to love.

Time and Temperature

I saw this graphic this week. It achieves its purpose well.

It’s not too late. What if we get it right?

Triple Maximum Speed!

Our sons love to run in a circuit through our apartment. As they do, the younger one loudly reports their movement from “maximum speed!” to “DOUBLE maximum speed” to “TRIPLE MAXIMUM SPEED!”

This is a harmless (so far!) game for them, but for most adults “triple maximum speed” is the uncritically accepted norm of life. We are too often stretched to breaking and do not consider that there is another way. When we do this, we miss the things of greatest value.

These are urgent times we live in… so, let us slow down.

The MGI

St. Ignatius wrote in annotation 22 of the Spiritual Exercises that “every good Christian ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbor’s statement than to condemn it.”

What is on offer here is to habituate the MGI – the most generous interpretation – which holds the door open for curiosity, learning.

This is difficult. Our brains are wired to scan the world for threats in order to keep ourselves safe. It is possible, though, that true safety may be arrived at only when a big group of us are able to default to the MGI.

Courageous or “Morally Superior”?

When we find polarization in our world (and we all do all of the time), do we engage it such that we might solve the underlying problem? Or do we engage in order to feel morally superior?

This outstanding video frames the question brilliantly.

Attachments

Attachments to the things that do not satisfy are like this.

Every day is a new opportunity to ask for the grace to let go of the bars and simply walk away.

Speed Reading a Poem

It’s a ridiculous idea, right?

The whole point of a poem is to slow down, savor the beauty of the words, and allow the meaning to emerge.

And yet, are we not often guilty of “speed reading” the best part of our lives? The people we have been given to love. The wonder of the natural world. The delightful complexity of our interior lives and our walk with God.

Let’s pray for the grace to read slowly.

The Adjacent Possible

The easy problems are all taken. That leaves the hard ones.

What an opportunity!

So, yes, the solution to the hard problem you have taken on is not immediately in sight.

But what is the next move? And once you move there, what can you see now that you could not see before?

Clarity may come once you move into the possibility adjacent to your current position.

You Can’t Make Old Friends

Have you heard “You Can’t Make Old Friends” lately? The journey that the first two lines can take us on is worth the click.

Maybe I love the song because an old friend of mine loves it, but I think there is something more.

I think it represents one of the gentlest memento mori moments around, reminding us to consider what is most valuable to us and that we do not get forever to cultivate and delight in those relationships.