Quotes about Attention

In order to pray I have to be paying more attention to God than to what people are saying to me; to God than to my clamoring ego. Usually, for that to happen there must be a deliberate withdrawal from the noise of the day, a disciplined detachment from the insatiable self.

Inappropriate, anxiety-driven, fear-driven work would only interfere with and distract from what God was already doing. My "work" assignment was to pay more attention to what God does than what I do, and then to find, and guide others to find, the daily, weekly, yearly rhythms that would get this awareness into our bones. Holy Saturday for a start. And then Sabbath keeping. Staying in touch with people in despair, knowing them by name, and waiting for resurrection.

Writing to explore and discover what I didn't know. Writing as a way of entering into language and letting language enter me, words connecting with words and creating what had previously been inarticulate or unnoticed or hidden. Writing as a way of paying attention. Writing as an act of prayer.

Keep vigilant watch over your heart; that's where life starts.

When the words of prophets seem repetitive, that should rivet our attention.

I shifted my attention to South because I felt I was being overexposed in the TV medium and my characters were also getting repetitive.

To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one's landlady.

It keeps us ever mindful of life, how it streams by in an awful rush if one is not careful to stop and listen...and honestly see. (Main character Annie Zook)

There isn't a single motivation, thought, act, or word that has slipped out of your being and escaped the full, undivided attention of God.

If you watch what you think about, you won't have to watch what you talk about.

When you have an open wound, it's festering and hurting constantly. Then it finally heals and then becomes a scar. Well, pretty soon you're not feeling it and not really paying attention to it.

In Asian languages, the word for 'mind' and the word for 'heart' are same. So if you're not hearing mindfulness in some deep way as heartfulness, you're not really understanding it. Compassion and kindness towards oneself are intrinsically woven into it. You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.