Quotes about Attention

I don't find pastors and professors, for the most part, very interested in matters of formation in holiness. They have higher profile things to tend to.

Christian faith needs continuous maintenance. It requires attending to. "If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post.

Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God's will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms. It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance.

Somehow, though he moves right in front of me, I don't see him; quietly but surely he's active, and I miss it.

In order to pray I have to be paying more attention to God than to what people are saying to me; to God than to my clamoring ego. Usually, for that to happen there must be a deliberate withdrawal from the noise of the day, a disciplined detachment from the insatiable self.

Inappropriate, anxiety-driven, fear-driven work would only interfere with and distract from what God was already doing. My "work" assignment was to pay more attention to what God does than what I do, and then to find, and guide others to find, the daily, weekly, yearly rhythms that would get this awareness into our bones. Holy Saturday for a start. And then Sabbath keeping. Staying in touch with people in despair, knowing them by name, and waiting for resurrection.

Writing to explore and discover what I didn't know. Writing as a way of entering into language and letting language enter me, words connecting with words and creating what had previously been inarticulate or unnoticed or hidden. Writing as a way of paying attention. Writing as an act of prayer.

Keep vigilant watch over your heart; that's where life starts.

When the words of prophets seem repetitive, that should rivet our attention.

I shifted my attention to South because I felt I was being overexposed in the TV medium and my characters were also getting repetitive.

To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one's landlady.

It keeps us ever mindful of life, how it streams by in an awful rush if one is not careful to stop and listen...and honestly see. (Main character Annie Zook)