attentiveness

ATTENTIVENESS: An Introduction —Short Flights And Quick Returns by Leighton Ford

April 7, 2018

An Introduction —Short Flights And Quick Returns by Leighton Ford
From The Attentive Life I am sitting on a bench at Lost Lagoon, on the edge of the hundreds and hundreds of acres of trees and trails that make up the vast Stanley Park in Vancouver, Canada.  Behind me are the tall buildings of the city.  Surrounding the park on three sides are the waters of English Bay and Burrard Inlet.  In the background, clouds hover over the mountains that slope down to frame Vancouver – my favorite city in the world, at least to visit. For much of the past decade and a half I have been coming here for a summertime pilgrimage.  I call it a pilgrimage not because Vancouver is such a holy place but because I can get away from my usual routines and hopefully resharpen my attentiveness and imagination. It is a lazy [...]

POETRY: The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver

September 3, 2014

The Summer Day Mary Oliver
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made this grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t [...]

PRAYER: Ways of Praying (3)—Prayers of Attentiveness, by Andrew Dreitcer

January 29, 2013

Ways of Praying (3)—Prayers of Attentiveness Andrew Dreitcer
From Prayer Practices for the Way of Peace: Choosing Peace Through Daily Practices The Examen, Praying With Creation, and Attention To Thoughts) As I have suggested, the Christian tradition has developed a richness of prayer.  There may be a form of prayer for every sensibility.  In this section, I present a number of ways of praying that may be practiced in order to help form an interior foundation for peace in oneself and in the world. Self-Examination: Giving and Receiving Peace Since the first few centuries of Christianity, Christians have practiced a form of prayer in which they examine their behaviors and their interior experiences in relation to the world around them.  For instance, the early desert monastics regularly reported [...]

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