Learning to Pay 
Attention (in Advent and Beyond)
 

The desert monastic Abba Moses once told a young monk, "Go sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything." There's much that could be unpacked from these wise words, but perhaps most significant is the reminder that God is always with us, even in the barest of cells. Like the young monk, at the heart of our life in Christ is the work of learning to pay attention. God's incarnation in Jesus is a compelling sign of God's desire to be with humanity. Although our attention has been besieged in recent years by numerous forces including massive technology companies that profit handsomely from our distraction, a life of following Jesus is a life of prayer, that is a life of attentiveness to God's presence with us, including the the ways in which God might be manifested to us among our neighbors. The articles linked below challenge us to work at cultivating our capacity for attention, even in our age that fiercely resists this sort of work.

Cultivating Communities works alongside cohorts of churches that are in close-proximity to each other, providing resources and helping them discern what it might look like for their congregations and their places to flourish. Our first three cohorts (one in the mountains of East Tennessee, one on the west side of Chicago, and one in Indianapolis) are now underway.

(Learn more about our cohorts and 
the Cultivating Communities Learning Journey)

An Attentiveness Apocalypse. Another way to say this is that all attention is connected. Learning piano or watching birds or studying math are connected to the same faculty of soul that prayer requires and develops. Likewise, anything that cultivates mindlessness in us works in the other direction: reducing the soul’s capacity for communion.  ( via Ben Sternke - Substack )

The Art of Conversation in Poverty Alleviation. Hearing from all the community stakeholders we’re trying to serve alongside is critical to the sustainability and effectiveness of any long-term efforts toward poverty alleviation and community development. If we take our call to listen seriously, we should make efforts to listen well—a skill most of us might think we’re better at than we are! (via The Chalmers Center)