Paying attention as prayer, as paying attention

For our first staff meeting of the summer, I chose to read aloud from a couple of influential sources to set a tone for our work.  I first read a short passage from Peter Kreeft's little book, Prayer for Beginners, the piece was entitled "Work: Praying Always."  Kreeft suggests in this little piece that the New Testament mandate that we "pray constantly" can only make sense if we understand that our actions can be prayer.  "Therefore we can pray even in working (not just as we work); we can make our works prayers."

We then read aloud from Simone Weil's well-known essay, "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God."  Here, Weil makes a case that the point of learning, of work, of school studies, is not mastery of content, but rather the ability to pay attention.  And paying attention, really paying attention, by bringing "more light to the soul," will eventually bear its fruit in prayer.  "Students must therefore work without any wish to gain good marks, to pass examinations, to win school successes; without any reference to their natural abilities and tastes; applying themselves equally to all their tasks, with the idea that each one will help to form in them the habit of paying attention which is the substance of prayer."  In an age of increasing distraction, and what appears to be decreasing abilities to paying attention, Weil's suggestion, for those who seek to understand the mysteries of prayer, is constructive.  Keep reading books, keep learning new things, keep exercising the muscles of attention.

But she warns that it won't be will power that enables the kind of attention we need to develop.  "Will power, the kind that, if need be, makes us set our teeth and endure suffering, is the principal weapon of the apprentice engaged in manual work.  But, contrary to the usual belief, it has practically no place in study.  The intelligence can only be led by desire.  For there to be desire, there must be pleasure and joy in the work.  The intelligence only grows and bears fruit in joy.  The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running."

And finally, Weil broadens her definition of "love of God," to include neighbor-love.  She writes, "The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: "What are you going through?"  ... This way of looking is first of all attentive.  The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth.  Only he who is capable of attention can do this.

"So it comes about that, paradoxical as it may seem, a Latin prose or a geometry problem, even though they are done wrong, may be of great service one day, provided we devote the right kind of effort to them.  Should the occasion arise, they can one day make us better able to give someone in affliction exactly the help required to save him, at the supreme moment of his need."

And we finished with a poem from Wendell Berry, titled, "Some further words."  The poem explores the meaning of identity, of living "fully human" lives, and the goodness of "the domestic world of humans, so long as it pays its debts to the natural world, and keeps its bounds."  

We were reminded in these readings, (and the tone was set for our summer together), that we can learn from prophets and teachers at the margins of many faith traditions, and that the relationship between the material and the spiritual is a many-splendored, inexplicable, and wonderful mystery.