Praying Attention
Luke 10:25-11:13

The Great Commandments tell us to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbor as ourselves. On recent Sundays we heard accounts of Jesus engaged with a lawyer who wonders exactly who his neighbor is, and of a distracted and anxious Martha whom Jesus encourages to be a disciple embracing contemplation, learning, and worship.

These teachings must have been shocking to Jesus’ listeners. Jesus claims that even our most hated enemies are to be loved and cared for. He claims that women, who were expected to provide hospitality in the home but who traditionally had no place in learning or study, could let go of the duties of hospitality and be disciples who participated fully.

But another shock would have been what immediately follows these two accounts: Jesus’ suggestions for how to pray.

Jews in Jesus’ day were well versed in prayer which was (and is) deeply integrated into daily life. When asking how to pray, the disciple asks a more subtle question, perhaps because the disciple has noticed something different about Jesus’ experience in prayer.

I think the very first words of “The Lord’s Prayer” must have been a shock to his listeners: “Abba” is Aramaic for “Papa” or “Daddy.” Address God not “Master of the Universe” but “Papa”? Startling also would be the realization that if God is our beloved Papa rather than our ruler, we are one family.

Jesus continues with homey examples, comparing the typical behavior of a loving parent with the even greater concern we might expect from our heavenly papa. This is not God as a magician or a kind of vending machine of goodies: prayer is not a quarter put in the cosmic gumball machine. No matter how fervent or frequent, prayers do not mean that we will have things our own way. The promise that Jesus makes is that God is listening, and that the Holy Spirit will be present in our prayers, the Holy Spirit that inspires us, that inspired others, and the blows where it will.

We pray, then, to practice paying attention to God, to our world, to those in this world.

We pray so that we may take small steps to the Kingdom where all are one. We pray to pay attention, and to be changed by the very act of paying–or praying–attention to the Holy, to the world around us, to others. Paying attention is so basic, so obvious, and yet so elusive. Every human interaction is made better by it, but we are distracted and pulled in many directions.

I love this story:

One day a man of the people said to Zen Master Ikkyu: “Master, will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?”

Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word “Attention.”
“Is that all?” asked the man. “Will you not add something more?”
Ikkyu then wrote twice running: “Attention. Attention.”
“Well,” remarked the man rather irritably, “I really don’t see much depth or subtlety in what you have just written”
Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times running: “Attention. Attention. Attention.”
Half angered, the man demanded: “What does that word ‘Attention’ mean anyway?”
And Ikkyu answered gently: “Attention means attention.”[1]

Attention means attention. Prayer is the cultivation and the practice of paying attention, growing in awareness of God’s holiness, of our needs and sustenance, of the need to forgive and to be forgiven, our hope for protection. We pray and learn to pay attention to reflect, meditate, bathe in the holiness and sanctity of this life of flesh and blood. It takes time and practice to notice and decipher the cares and joys of others. It takes time and practice to savor, be thankful for, be vigilant for, the moments of awareness or connection with the Holy.

You may feel that you don’t know how to pray. You might be surprised to find out how many people feel the same way. I would like to make Autumn 2025 a time of exploring modes of prayer and ways to integrate prayer into our own life. I hope that there will be some gentle surprises.

Here’s a start: observing a grasshopper on a summer day, Mary Oliver writes

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.

The focus, awareness, attention, that Oliver brings to a walk through a field is the direction and focus that we wish to cultivate through prayer, and it is prayer. Attention, attentiveness, presence to the moment, are at the heart of prayer.

Love of God and love of neighbor means life directed by the north star of God’s call to love that is expressed in connection with neighbor, in the words of Alison Kraus, through being a living prayer, paying attention and responding with care:

In Your love I find release
A haven from my unbelief
Take my life and let me be
A living prayer, my God to Thee.

I am looking forward to a season of experimenting and finding out how we each may learn to cultivate attention to the Holy One, to our Papa, and how cultivate attention—and compassion and action—for our neighbor. Attention means attention. If it’s not about love, it’s not about God. In the meantime, say the Lord’s Prayer really hearing the words, letting them resonate, applying the words to your life: God’s abiding presence. Sustenance. Forgiveness and forgiving-ness. Protection. Be aware of how you respond in action. Pay attention—and pray.

Jen+

For Martha, sister of Mary (Luke 10: 38-42)
Mary Oliver “The Summer Day”
New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, 1992

Who made the world?
Who made the swan and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

For the lawyer who wants to know who his neighbor is (Luke 10:30-37)
Alison Kraus and Union Station: A Living Prayer

In this world I walk alone
With no place to call my home
But there’s one who holds my hand
The rugged road through barren lands

The way is dark the road is steep
But He’s become my eyes to see
The strength to climb my griefs to bear
The Savior lives inside me there

In Your love I find release
A haven from my unbelief
Take my life and let me be
A living prayer, my God to Thee.

In these trials of life I find
Another voice inside my mind
He comforts me and bids me live
Inside the love the Father gives

In Your love I find release
A haven from my unbelief
Take my life and let me be
A living prayer my God to Thee.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=a+living+prayer#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:a0616dc2,vid:6oRwibFVrSw,st:0 (pictures and lyrics with produced version)

[1] From the Zenso Mondo (Dialogues of the Zen Masters), translation by Kuni Matsuo and E. Steinliber-Oberlin, in Philip Kapleau, Three Pillars of Zen, (New York: Anchor Books), 1980, p. 11.

Rev. Jen has set her office drop-in day as Wednesday of each week from 9:30 – 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. for anyone who would like to stop in and visit. You are always invited to make an appointment for a time convenient for you. Mondays are her Sabbath day.

TUESDAY BIBLE STUDY

The Book and Bible Group has begun again, meeting at 4:30 p.m. most Tuesday afternoons with Evening Prayer celebrated at 4:00 p.m. The next one will be Tuesday, August 5. On August 5 we will continue reading “Love is the Way” by Michael Curry.

ALTAR FLOWER CALENDAR

An altar flower calendar is posted in Hamilton Hall. Sign up to sponsor the altar flowers to commemorate a birthday or anniversary, remember a loved one, or in thanksgiving for an important event. We ask a donation to help offset the cost of the altar flowers and other worship expenses. Be sure to tell the office your dedication so that it can be printed in the bulletin. Please make checks payable to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church and in the memo field please put this information: Altar Flowers, person’s name, occasion, Sunday date you’d like for the flowers to be on the altar.

VESTRY MEETING MINUTES

If any of you are interested in what your Vestry is doing, there are two copies of each month’s minutes on the music stand in Hamilton Hall. Feel free to read and return!

SHOPPING LIST FOR NON-FOOD PANTRY

Please add Adult Pull-Ups (all sizes) and bed pads to your shopping list for the NFP for the month of August. If you are donating adult pull-ups/briefs, they should be the ones without tabs. We are currently overstocked in adult diapers and period products. Meals and conversation in Hamilton Hall are going well. Patrons are now able to pick out items they most need. Your contributions help our budget go farther in helping meet the needs of those in Putnam County. The next Non-Food Pantry will be Saturday, August 30 from noon – 2:00 p.m. If you can help with this ministry in any way, please contact Harriet Moore or Fred Vallowe.

KROGER COUPONS

If you have any unwanted Kroger coupons, please bring them to Hamilton Hall and place in the window ledge near the “Little Library”. We would like to make them available to our Non-Food Pantry recipients so that they might be able to take advantage of them to help extend their food budget. Thanks in advance!

FREE DAILY DEVOTIONAL

We have some large print Day by Day daily devotionals in the sanctuary that you are free to take home for your personal devotions–and if we know that people would like copies, we can order the right amount. Many of you may also appreciate the on-line version of Day to Day. Click here.

ON-GOING COVID PROTOCOL

We continue to respond to both our county’s current CDC designation and to the current variant. Masking is optional. Decisions on COVID policy have moved from the Reconvening Committee to Rev. Jen and the Wardens.

We have heard that the daily reflections and scripture readings provided during Lent were appreciated. The meditations are written by persons from Gobin UMC and Beech Grove UMC. They will be in the newsletter each week. Whether you enjoy these every day or as the Spirit moves you, may this resource continue to bring you spiritual food for the journey. Blessings!

Click here to view the readings and accompanying links.

Your prayers are asked for: