When Anne Lamott say that the best definition for “God” is “not me,” she’s plugging into the importance of reverence. Reverence is the recognition of something greater than the self-something that is beyond human creation or control, that transcends full human understanding.Ĭonnecting reverence and attention makes sense, since both involve de-centering and a clear awareness of what is other than me. The exercise of reverence generally includes knowing your rank in the overall scheme of things. Reverence, as Taylor describes it, is the recognition that “it’s not all about me.” Taylor introduces attentiveness through its related virtue, reverence. My commissioned essay should write itself.Ĭhapter Two in An Altar in the World is “The Practice of Paying Attention” Barbara Brown Taylor even discusses Simone Weil and attention in a couple of the chapter’s middle pages. I’ve used this aspect of Weil in the classroom for twenty-five years, I frequently say that her meditations on attentiveness have changed my life, and I included an chapter on attention in my 2017 book Freelance Christianity: Philosophy, Faith, and the Real World (shameless plug). I introduce students to Simone Weil through one of her seminal essays that develops an understanding of attention, the cultivated capacity to see the reality of things other than oneself and to engage with them without the distorting lenses and framework of the self. One of these topics is “attention.” This should be an easy one. ![]() I am one of three dozen contributors to the forthcoming The Bloomsbury Handbook of Simone Weil I have been assigned two important topics in Weil’s work on which to write 3000-word essays for this handbook. One of the things I expected to be thinking about and considering while on retreat was a couple of short academic essays that are due to the editor by September 1. But I’m three years older and a pandemic has happened since my first time through-this time it read as if it had been written precisely for me at this point in my life. I know that I’ve read it carefully before because there is so much marking and underlining in it. Why Christians Should Care About Their Bodiesīut as Big Bird would have it, An Altar in the World is exactly the book I needed to take with me. I even reposted an essay I wrote on that retreat inspired by a chapter in this book on this blog a couple of weeks ago. I grabbed An Altar in the World-a decision I regretted while unpacking my bag when I remembered that I had taken this very book with me on my last retreat three years ago. Five minutes before I left the house, I walked past the part of our library bookshelf where Barbara Brown Taylor’s books hang out. I had a specific reason for taking each book with me, except the last one. Even though I would only be on site for 72 hours, I packed so many books in my bookbag that it was heavier than I ever recall it being in the ten years or so that it has been my man purse. Edmund’s Retreat Center on Enders Island in Connecticut, just an hour away from home. I listened to her and ended up scheduling a silent retreat at St. Maybe it was that my June began with a serious bicycle crash and ended with a not-as-serious-but-very-annoying fender bender in the car. Maybe it was that although a silent retreat used to be a regular annual event for me, I had not been on one since pre-pandemic in 2019. Maybe it was my wandering around the house aimlessly and sighing a lot. I’m not sure what prompted this suggestion. Jeanne started mentioning a couple of months ago that she thought I should find an appropriate location and go away on silent retreat for a few days. ![]() ![]() The hill and neighborhood where I met the deer are unfamiliar because I am away on retreat for three days. I don’t know a whole lot about deer, but I do know that deer with horns are dudes. “Looking good, dude,” I said as he sauntered off into someone’s back yard. I stopped far enough away to get my phone out of my pocket without scaring him and took a very amateurish picture-at least I got one. I was on my usual early morning bike ride (the closest thing I have to a spiritual practice these days), came down an unfamiliar hill in an unfamiliar neighborhood, and there he was standing in the middle of the road. I met a deer the other morning, the first deer I’ve met in a long time.
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