On Paying Attention

Luke’s story of the nativity begins with a description of people who are displaced, a forced migration that brings disruption and chaos to the lives of the poor and the dispossessed. The story is so familiar to us and yet we fail to grasp its meaning, partly because the experience is so unfamiliar to many of us. Or perhaps it was. In the course of the last two years, we have grown more accustomed to displacement and disruption in our own lives. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that the lives of every single one of us are fragile and unpredictable.

This is what we learn from St Luke’s description of the Christmas story. The annunciation records the uncertainty of Mary: ‘How shall this be?’ Luke describes the confusion and sheer incompetence that characterizes the birth – there is no room in the inn. Jesus is wrapped in bands of cloth and laid in a manger. No-one notices, no-one cares. The birth is greeted by a motley crew of humble shepherds. A series of events on the edge of the Roman empire met with a mixture of incomprehension and mild indifference. Who would begin to imagine that in the arresting and persistent cry of a child, God speaks to us?

And yet, in the unfolding of these events, we learn that God crosses over the infinity of space and time, to dwell with us and to share in the chaos and confusion of our lives. He comes at his own time. We have the power to consent to receive him or to refuse. He does not demand our attention. In the words of one of the great, if unorthodox, religious thinkers of the twentieth century: ‘If we remain deaf, he comes back again and again like a beggar’ in the hope that one day we might actually notice.

The French philosopher, Simone Weil, wrestled with the demands of orthodox Christian belief for most of her life. She knew that ‘sacred longing’, for goodness, beauty and truth. And she also lamented the fact that most of the time, most of us simply fail to pay attention. In our anxious lives, we cultivate a frantic busyness, as much displacement activity as possible, to keep at bay the need to wrestle with the questions of life, to wonder at what it means to live or to die.

Simone Weil once said that ‘attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity’. To pay attention, to cultivate a capacity for attentiveness, is what the great spiritual writers of the Christian tradition mean when they speak of prayer and contemplation. We imagine, and sometimes we are led to believe, that prayer is about finding the right words to say, the right things to ask for, when in truth, we are simply invited to pay attention. And that attentiveness is a form of love.

So as we gaze attentively on the face of Jesus, this vulnerable new-born baby, what do we learn? Well, as we contemplate the Christmas story, we might ponder the pain of the world, the quiet lives of desperation lived by so many, who struggle to survive, whose hearts cry out for hope, and those who seek forgiveness because they can barely begin to forgive themselves. And the mystery of Christmas is that this is where God’s grace to be found. Emmanuel, God-with-us. We learn that God’s presence is disclosed to us in the strangest of places, places of deep and real need, amidst the chaos and confusion, the displacement and disruption of our lives. God’s true Wisdom is made known to us not as someone who does not need our help, but in a helpless child who reaches out to us. This is the mystery disclosed to us in the Christmas story – this is why the angels sing – but to notice any of this, we need to be attentive, to pray, to love.