“To be human in an aching world is to know our dignity and become people who safeguard the dignity of everything around us.”
— Cole Arthur Riley
Dear Front Porchers,
A few years ago, when my brother was still unable to walk, I took care of him every other week for about six months. After dinner and the rituals of caretaking—after reading a chapter of This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley and tucking him in with two pillows carefully placed against his back—I said a prayer and kissed the top of my brother’s bald head. If I forgot and walked back to his guest room to begin my bedtime rituals, he’d call for me.
I would hear his voice: Anne-Elizabethe (he always calls me by my full name). I’d head down the hall to his room and say the prayer that was pretty much the same every time. “Dear God, Help Seth have a peaceful night’s sleep. Help his body to keep healing. Thank you for your love. Help us to…” And I often paused because praying had become so complicated for me. I had become careful and hesitant about my prayers because my understanding of God’s love and work in the world had evolved. God’s work in a moment. In my brother’s body. In my heart. In a war-ravaged country. In a school classroom. In a national election. I no longer believe that God single-handedly changes circumstances. I paused because I couldn’t find the words sufficient for the moment and because praying in front of anyone felt - and still feels - performative.
Yesterday morning, I stumbled upon the music video of Brandi Carlile’s “The Joke.” Watching it felt like an answer to a prayer I hadn’t consciously uttered. Instead of listening to the news and spiraling down my rabbit hole of despair first thing in the morning, I paid attention to something else. I was inspired and hopeful, even if just for a moment - in a time when the current administration is desperately trying to get us to pay attention to their circus over and over again. And, of course, as I said in my last post, we need to pay attention to what the narcissistic, power-hungry posse in the White House (you should have seen the inside of my brain trying to figure out what to call them ) is doing and be informed enough to take meaningful action when necessary. But more often, I want to have power over who and what captures my attention. Even the attention it took to come up with an appropriate name for POTUS and his gang was too much. What we pay attention to informs our days and our lives. It informs the quality and bravery of our actions. It informs our ability to stay grounded and compassionate.
Yesterday afternoon on The Rachel Maddow Show, Rachel talked with Chris Hayes about his new book, The Siren’s Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource. He spoke of our biologically inherited ability to shift our focus at the drop of a hat in the face of danger, which means, among other things, we are prone to distraction. He says that one of the things we need to cultivate right now is sustained attention and focus by “putting ourselves in institutions and conditions and environments where we’re cultivating [prolonged attention] in ourselves because that is its own kind of power.” Rachel’s response was spot on. “...being able to name it, recognize it, think about it, make decisions about it, rather than it all just seeming like an ambient thing you can’t control is very calming.” I loved hearing an intelligent political commentator speak of what brings her calm amid a storm and in a conversation that is primarily logical and a bit discouraging, only because of the nature of the news she is trying to help us make sense of.
On Monday, I taught a class on mindfulness in writing at a local high school. As I was planning the lesson, the idea that came to me - even before I listened to this episode of The Rachel Maddow Show - was essentially about the power of our attention. I told these high school students who are constantly being preyed upon for their attention - indeed, some of them, in the very moment I was talking, clutched their phones under their desks - that one of the only things we have control over is what we choose to pay attention to. And we do have a choice. I invited them to consider a simple writing practice to take some power back over their attention and how it can help bring them back to a sense of calm. It can bring them back to themselves, to an intention and mindset that they could choose rather than being blown around by the wind of a capitalist or fear-based attention-seeking agenda.
When I think back to my nightly prayers for my brother, I am struck by how they served a purpose - beyond the mysterious and mystical work that I no longer feel as compelled to figure out - to shift my attention and bring me to a calm place. Instead of lying in bed worrying about whether he would walk again, whether his cancer treatments would work, or some other existential rumination about my own life, I paid attention to something else. I paid attention to the sweetness of my brother, who had spent years living alone, asking his sister to pray for him. Maybe prayer is as much about attention as anything else. Maybe Seth's calling for me was also the Divine calling for me, calling me to pay attention to hope. To my brother’s dignity in all he had suffered, more than asking for anything.
Watching the video was my prayer, my power, another call to pay attention to hope, and these days, I sure as heck need it to keep on calling - in all different and surprising ways. I’m not going to say anything about the video. I tried to find sufficient words for what I was watching, beautiful words to describe how it made me feel and how it connected to everything else swirling in my universe this week. But just watch. I’m pretty sure you won’t wish you hadn’t.