Russellings of the Spirit

Sometimes it is easier not to notice. 

I’m not talking about merely SEEING… skimming briskly across the surface, dipping in a toe here, then here…

… absorbing just enough substance from which to fashion a quip, a comment, a post…

… sometimes committing outright “thought theft” to make people think we noticed.

Seeing… but not genuinely noticing.

We play the part. We say the words. We settle for “close enough.”

No… I don’t mean SEEING. I mean NOTICING. Deep, masterclass level noticing.

Noticing with the eyes of our soul.

We tend to avoid it because we sense that noticing… really noticing… comes with strings attached.

It joins us.

It bonds us.

It commits us to advancing the well-being of that which we noticed.

Because here is how it works; the eyes of our soul are connected to our affections.

Our affections are connected to our compassion.

And our compassion is connected to our action.

Inescapably connected. Like one bone to another.

• How do I notice – for example – the systems of injustice and racism that still brutalize the lives of my African American brothers and sisters and still not ACT?

• How do I notice the damaging effects of humankind’s poisoning behaviors on the delicate systems of LIFE on this planet and still fail to ACT?

• How do I notice the rampant gnawing hunger for MEANING and PURPOSE among my global kinfolk and still sit here on my hands doing NOTHING about it?

Looking… seeing… noticing… makes me feel small… overwhelmed… overmatched by what I notice.

And so… sometimes I decide it is better not to notice in the first place. 

As I turn my head in the vain attempt to find some nice, soft sand in which to bury it, something stops me. I hear the voice that reminds me I worship the God who SEES… who deeply NOTICES… everything.

I am reminded of the story of Hagar – the slave girl impregnated by Abraham and then sent into the desert to die by Abraham’s wife Sarah. God noticed Hagar there in her misery and had compassion on her, leading her to gratefully declare: “’You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me.’” (Genesis 16:13, NRSV).

I’m sure Hagar meant to say, “The One who notices me.”

This God is also the God who inspired these words of the psalmist: 

“You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.”      (Psalm 139:1-4, NRSV)

As we read these words, we understand them as words of gratitude and reverence… not as some kind of paranoid complaint, the way a modern reader might hear them.

You and I are supremely NOTICED – and therefore supremely LOVED – by the One who created it all. 

And so, if it is true that you and I are created in the image of this God, it means we are also created to NOTICE and LOVE the world we inhabit.

Every bit of it.

Abundant blessings;