Paying Attention!

This week’s chapter in Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar in the World focuses on the Spiritual Practice of Paying Attention, which she names as Reverence. She begins the chapter explaining how she learned the idea of reverence from her father. His reverence did not originate in his relationship with God, but was something that rather he had learned in the army, as he learned his “rank in the overall scheme of things.” She goes on to explore this idea of reverence, citing another author, Paul Woodruff, who defines reverence as “the recognition of something greater than the self—something that is beyond human creation or control, that transcends full human understanding.” Woodruff explains that reverence is what keeps people from acting as if they were gods.

Not only does reverence help people to have a proper understanding of their place in the world, but it is also of use in helping people understand that others also have a place in this world. In citing Woodruff’s ideas, Taylor says, “An irreverent soul who is unable to feel awe in the presence of things higher than self is also unable to feel respect in the presence of things it sees as lower than self.” This idea really resonates with me. Taylor explains that everything has a place in the order of this world—everything from rocks to spiders to people to the fly that is constantly landing on me right now as I sit outside on my back deck writing this. She says that it is ours to decide how we will interact with these things, but that while I may choose to kill the fly (who has now moved to the number keypad on my laptop), I should do so knowing that it has been created. This idea of reverence, or paying attention, helps us to see things in a way that we wouldn’t normally.

As she suggested, I just stopped writing for a minute to really watch the fly. I have to admit, it was pretty interesting to watch him (her?) jump around the keyboard with its little feeler out. His body and its parts are so incredibly small, yet, no matter how hard I blew on him, he did not move where he didn’t want to go. It was less interesting to watch a small liquid deposit land on my “L” key, but that will be cleaned with disinfectant very soon!

Taylor does suggest that if we want to try this practice, that we move outside and just watch and pay attention to a small area of earth where we are. This is a practice that costs nothing but time, yet time is the very factor that limits us all from living in the place of reverence on a regular basis. We move through life at a hurried pace, never stopping to really take in and see what is all around us. She suggests limiting our focus to 3 square feet of Earth and spending 20 minutes or so just really looking and observing and thinking about what we see, hear, and smell. Where did these things come from, and where are they going? What impact do they have on us, and us on them?

While this part of the practice doesn’t seem to challenging to me, the next part is a little more obtrusive. Taylor suggests that we move from really seeing creation to really seeing individual people—the busboy, the checker at Wal-Mart, the man delivering a package—they all also have origins and storylines that both have similarities and differences to your own. Take the time to learn those similarities and differences, and to appreciate God’s creation—extending reverence to both that person and God in the process.

Taylor talks about the story of Moses in this chapter, and the fact that Moses only observed the burning bush because he chose to follow it. He made the conscious decision to take a detour, to go see the thing that was out of the ordinary, instead of just noticing it and moving on toward his intended destination. Reverence, it turns out, requires paying attention. It requires detours, pit stops, and blocks of time set aside for noticing. As we take that time, though, our appreciation for what we are observing will no doubt increase. It’s hard not to appreciate and respect something that you have given time to thinking about and getting-to-know. And, as we become more respectful and reverent, we are taking steps toward being more like God, as we take time to notice the handiwork of the creator.