Wonderful Day

It's sunny today. I love the rain but it's so lovely to walk under that bright scrim of blue. And I have been having the most wonderful day.

After feeling so morose about my inability to pay attention, things shifted a bit. It's not that I'm not paying attention--as if I was a zombie or a robot-- I am actually acutely attentive-- -- It's only that my attention would better serve me (and God and those around me) if I were to shift its focus.

I know this is mostly semantics. But--I'm a poet and semantics are just about everything to me. How freeing it was to stop screaming at myself "JENNY, PAY ATTENTION," (with the rest of my internal tape saying all sorts of impatient, unkind and unhelpful words-- and instead to say, "Shift your attention. Look up. Look out. Look around." Ahhh. It must have been from God it brings me such profound joy and restfulness.

I felt like attention was this huge expensive necessity which I had not a single cent in cash reserves to pay. And then, it was as if God said-- "you have enough"

Unfortunately most of the time my attention is focused on figuring out how to protect myself from other people, how to hide away from other's attention and love and mostly their otherness-- how to get people to approve of or like me-- how to avoid God's loving gaze of goodness by working really hard at cooking all the world's internal judgment books so that I might fall on the right side--

I know this about myself-- it's one of my besetting sins-- but I just hadn't put it together with my inner cringing shame at the words: "pay attention."

This may make no sense. But it was a huge blessing to me. When I find myself (very often) self-involved and sidetracked by the old spin cycles I get on-- (one friend said, "Just think of yourself as a gutter-ball") I hear a word of grace --Shift your attention. Attend to other things right now. There's enough time for what is necessary.