Attending to Attention

What holds my attention? I love the adage: where attention goes, energy flows. There is a very specific and interesting connection between attention and energy. How often my attention is in the wrong place because I am in an energy crisis. I’m tired, I’m bitter, I am not in the right emotional space, and therefore my attention drifts from where it should be to something that feels like an energy boost. The phone is the easiest culprit for my distraction. I escape through a short hit of dopamine as I look at cute cheetahs or read about the latest news crisis.

The etymology of attention means to stretch toward. It is an investment— a form of love. It is total focus; love in action.

I meditate on Jesus’s story about the Good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite work to avoid paying attention to the wounded man in the ditch. They channel their energies somewhere else. They move to the other side of the road. They quicken their pace. They avert their eyes. They hurry past.

Instead, the Samaritan pays attention. He stops. He bends down and listens, he notices and then directs his energy toward that witness. He sees and pays attention to the needs of the wounded man.

The etymology of energy is activity, operation, work focus. I consider distraction to be an energy crisis. What caused the priest and the Levite to look away? What compels them to hurry by? They have no energy to help.

I think about our homes and our churches. What energy crises cause us to place our attention somewhere else? What energy crisis am I experiencing that causes me to fail to attend to the needs around me? What am I rushing toward that robs me of being lovingly present?

Does Jesus give us the answer to energy crisis in the first requirement of our time and attention?

He tells us to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Perhaps this is the best solution for any attention and energy struggle when we need to love our neighbor as our self. God, as love, channels our full attention of heart, mind, spirit, soul, strength —all that we are —so that the ability to see and attend to the needs of our neighbor comes from this first attention and total energy to love God. As we attend to loving God, God fills us with the love to attend to our neighbor.

I imagine the priest and Levite walking down the road, their thoughts filled with the numerous tasks of their day. Perhaps the Samaritan instead was spending his time praising and rejoicing in the Lord. I do know the vast difference in my actions when my thoughts tend toward tasks or worse, versus love and praise.

Dad would recommend a careful examination of where our attention and energy go each day.

What entertains my thinking?
What are my habits?
What am I doing day in day out that shows my attention and energy to love God and my neighbor?
Energy is affected by what I resist. What am I resisting that gives me more energy to love God and to love neighbor?
Do my daily companions, my church, my inner thoughts lead me closer to the love of God?
Where is the energy crisis that drains me from attention?
Attention demands high energy. How do I navigate this energy drain each day?

"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." - Philippians 4:8