attention

Dear friend,

Christ is born and a new year is upon us! Happy days to you in this season of light in the darkness.

One week ago I returned to my home in Romania after spending the holidays in New Mexico with my dear family and then the first week of 2023 in Iowa with an old friend and her new baby. It was a restorative step away from my normal life, a time in which I was able to read three and a half books, hike through the unique landscape of the American Southwest, visit the Orthodox parish that served as my cradle for entering the faith, go bouldering with my sister who has become a much better climber than me, make an entire quilt with the cutting and ironing help of my mom, go on neighborhood walks with my dad, catch up with dear friends, hold their babies, and spend lots of hours on lots of airplanes, which can be a good place to meditate on the end of one year and the beginning of the next. 

On new year’s day, at the humble but lively and warm parish of All Saints of North America in Albuquerque, our priest spoke of watchfulness, and attention—of their importance and their fragility in our modern times. We are constantly being marketed to, he said, and then he put his hands up for a little caveat: this isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s just the truth of the matter. Our attention is the commodity here. We have been turned into the product. 

This very truth has been so on the forefront of my mind lately that I could hardly believe we were talking about it there, in the middle of the Divine Liturgy. I feel like I have a front row seat watching modern life fray the attentions and therefore the very lives of our youths, and increasingly of our young children as well. I am in daily contact with young people suffering from depression, anxiety attacks, psychotic episodes, overdoses, eating disorders, alcohol and drug abuse, and underage sex. I’m not trying to say that all the ills of the world can be traced back to social media, nor am I trying to launch into a sort of “kids these days” diatribe. I think we do have to recognize however the unmistakable correlations between the world our kids are coming of age in and their overall wellbeing.

Of course, it’s fraying our attentions too, but most of us have the buffer of our early years fighting for us. I’m afraid the children of today’s world haven’t been given much of a chance. We have been the creators and sustainers of this world, and therefore I think it falls on us to shoulder the burden of its healing and redemption. We have to be willing to really see our young people, to bear witness to and offer a hand in their struggle. But perhaps first we need to bear our own struggle with self-awareness and responsibility. 

There is no prayer without watchfulness, our priest told us, and there is no union with God without prayer. And so watchfulness, or paying attention, becomes a significant spiritual issue, one that we cannot afford to not notice. His sermon also invoked the title of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica’s teachings: “Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives.” Wherever we choose to plant our attention, there we will reap the fruit of our days. But this is our hope (and likewise, our grave responsibility): in the end, it’s in our hands. We can choose where we put our attention. It takes work and patience and care and discernment but it is within our God-given capabilities. It lives in the marrow of our humanity.

And so if we are to be people of prayer, people of soil and root, people of God-union and Earth-communion, let our attention be culled and cultivated, tended and mended and healed. Let it make us into who we are becoming.

With loving attention,

Xenia