The Job of Attentiveness

Brian Fee, Untitled

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any—lifted from the no

of all nothing—human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

--e e cummings from i thank You God

We recently attended a lecture featuring the poet and former chairman of the NEA, Dana Gioia.  If you are searching for a good articulation on the wisdom of art, Gioia is your man. Quoting Frost, Gioia reminds us how “poetry is a way of remembering what it would impoverish us to forget.” And, the former chairman made no qualms citing how impoverished our culture has become, now bereft of beauty. One example is the disparity between a WPA-era built public building, such as the local post office, and its contemporary version. This lack of concern for beauty illustrates how we have we lost confidence in its power.  And, isn't it interesting with the loss of beauty truth soon became untenable? We live in the time of the great no.

Art, however, lifts us from negation to tenderize the imagination. It opens eyes wider and ears deeper to encounter what is unimaginable. Through numerous experiences of cognitive tasting, touching, hearing, seeing, breathing  we develop and strengthen our beauty muscles. Beauty itself is a process. Gioia brakes down the movements into four steps: 1) Beauty causes us to linger. 2) In the lingering we experience pleasure. 3) This pleasure stems from capturing the true-ness of the object that has initiated the lingering. 4) Steps 1 through 3 are fleeting, reminding us we are not in control and that beauty is grace—a gift we have not earned.  Isn’t all of learning a gift?

Simone Weil believes the development of attention (such as in school studies) is “extremely effective in increasing the power of attention that will be available at the time of prayer.” (Weil, Waiting for God, p. 105) In our pragmatic obsession with the accumulation of information we have forgotten our aim in learning and the reliability of our senses to teach us how big God is. If Weil is correct, the attentiveness found and strengthened through our work can create the space of prayer.

And, beauty, as Gioia avers, is a reliable way to learn this attentiveness. Art speaks not just to the head, but grasps the heart, utilizes the body, and culls from the recesses of memory.  Thus, aesthetics assist Christ’s mission of restoring us to our full humanity. What does all of this mean for artists? Like Jesus, we bear this burden to restore human wholeness. Artists must pick up the mantle of leadership and forge, with the help of God, new ways of bringing beauty back into all of society.

i thank You God,

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

--Maria