November 29, 2012
Divided Attention
We’ve all been in social situations where the person we are talking to
is always looking beyond us to see who else is in the room. Or we can see the
talking heads on television who, rather than talking to the TV audience or
their co-hosts, are watching their monitor to see how they look on the screen. I
suppose God feels something similar when I start thinking about getting Sunday
dinner on the table while the sermon is being preached. “Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to
your word.” (Psalm 119:37 NIV)
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2 comments:
Gail;
-----I’ve never been entirely critical of divided attention. I’ve recognized some possible purpose for it. I bought a book a couple weeks ago called “Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind” by Joe Dispenza. I had watched his movie in the last year or so, “What the Bleep Do We Know?” and was thoroughly bored by it, but mildly bewildered about what it was actually trying to say. Since I’ve been rummaging around in ideas and information about knowledge and psychology and such, when I saw the title of that movie on the cover of his book it sparked a curiosity which led me to open the book and do some spot reading. I’m glad I did, because it had very much my needed level of information about the actual physiological working of the brain as well as the practical implications of such physiological working.
-----Knowledge about the boundaries between conscious and subconscious thought and retrievable and irretrievable memory has always struck me as being a valuable resource. Discovering connections between thoughts, ideas, and emotions we otherwise take for granted are new experiences in themselves. (And “taking for granted” seems to be one of the operative principles making those boundaries.) So I love the way the Lord breaches boundaries by throwing the right book or movie or sermon or experience into the right pool of thoughts at a particular time such that these two or more halves of divided attention find a fit to build totally new and very useful concepts.
-----Then I never struggled completely to keep pots and pans off my mind during sermons, although they rather randomly showed up and slipped out. The right thought wandering by at the right time might lead to the inside of a sequestered mental pot finally getting a deep washing by what a good preacher might be saying at the moment.
-----So, as I assimilate more of Dispenza’s book into what I’ve been mentally attending, I am getting very excited about finally being able to begin using my mind like I’ve always wanted, even though for some time I had become convinced I never could. And this little stream of attention you’ve turned on with today’s blog is God again pitching a particular idea into an appropriate pool of my thought that will now stir like it would not have otherwise. For I now see the usefulness of not just divided attention, the willy-nilly, maybe useful maybe hindering kind, but a disciplined division which brings alongside sermons and worship streams and other experiences the facets of me needing to be effected for the better.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Amen. Thanks for sharing this post! Oh, how we need to give all our undivided attention to the one who deserves it all...he's worth it!!
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