Paying Attention

Have you ever noticed that wherever or on whatever we fix our attention, the more of this wherever or whatever we see.  Hmmm. Does that mean that there are now more instances of the wherever or whatever than there were before I fixed my attention on them? Of course not. I notice them more because I am paying attention.

When I took a course in photography, the teacher taught us to look for patterns of three because he thought that they made a scene more alive and interesting. I began seeing them everywhere. They had always been there, but once I began to pay attention I noticed them more.

William Temple, an Anglican bishop in the first half of the twentieth century said, “When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't, they don't.” He did not mean that his prayers caused the coincidences, but that when he prayed he was more alert to what happened.

What would happen if we each began to pay attention to moments of grace, of pure gift in life? Would we begin to see more of it, more of God acting in the world? And seeing more of it, would it begin to tune our lives to expect more of it? Might we begin to act in ways that offered more grace to others? Might we actually begin to become more visible signs for others?