Summer’s For Attention!

"For lack of attention" writes the English mystic Evelyn Underhill, "a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day." Yes and much more than loveliness.

Moments of grace, great insights, epiphanies or holy appearances and blessings, are lost to us because we are in too much of a hurry to notice them. Slow down or you’ll miss the good stuff the rest of this week.

What better opportunity to attend to what we normally rush by than our vacations? I believe that many during this summer period of vacation will be attending more to relationships, nature, and ourselves - taking care of our bodies and spirits.

Ask yourself what will my attention bring me today and during days of relaxation and recreation this summer? By evening’s end, you will have an answer and by vacation’s end you might have a multitude of answers.

Be prepared to look long and steadily at things. They will speak to you and reveal themselves.

"Boredom" notes therapist Fritz Perls, "is lack of attention." Take yourself off automatic pilot and you enter a whole new world of wonders.

"The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass," writes Henry Miller, "it becomes a mysterious awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."

Pay attention. Stay awake. The l3th century Sufi poet, Jelaluddin Rumi, knows what is required:

"No more words. In the name of this place we drink in

with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower.

So the night birds will start singing."

And Jesus of Nazareth said:

"Consider of the lilies of the field.

They don’t work or fret over their appearance.

And God gives them beauty greater than the raiment worn by King Solomon."

When we take comfort and inspiration from what is all around us we purchase a protection policy from having to take false and escapist comforts in our obsessions be they work, addictions, false gods, and self-defeating lifestyles.

Summertime, just because the pace of life changes, is a superb opportunity to pay attention to things we overlook and to attend to qualities we need more of in our lives.