Chapter 2: The Birthing Hour / Time before Time (60-61)

Inasmuch as Chapter 2 is about getting up in the pre-dawn darkness, it's surely appropriate that Ford should give us some good news about sleep. He recommends it, especially as a spiritual exercise! For two reasons: first, as "embodied spirits" we need to pay attention to our bodies which God has designed for the pleasures and joy of rest; and second, God, who does not sleep, gives himself as our model for rest and sabbath. So inasmuch as God "made us to need sleep" and He himself knows how to relax, we find it a joy to slow down and periodically close our eyes as a spiritual exercise expressing our trust in God.

Somewhere I've read that Martin Marty, the University of Chicago's distinguished church historian, lies down seven times a day (on the floor, I'm told, with his feet up on the coffee table) so as to take seven short naps throughout the day. Envisioning Marty so, I think of him as the patron saint of nappers, someone to emulate.

So here's my witness: this morning I went out to the workshop for Vigils about 5:00 a.m. Since today the Church is remembering St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, after Vigils I read a few pages from Augustine's Confessions, Chapter 9, wherein he tells us what we know about his mother. After some long pauses to reflect on things, I crossed the yard (now wet with the night's soft raining) and came back into the house and went back to bed for an hour. Absolutely delicious!

Chapter 2: The Birthing Hour / Time before Time (55-59)

Ford's telling of his family story is quite remarkable. How fortunate for him to have read the journal of his biological mother so that he knows how much she loved her baby and his father, Tom, whom Ford never met. And how honest to tell us about his adoptive parents, Olive and Charles. As the father of an adopted daughter, I hope my Chelsea will be able in her late days to look back upon her birthing hours and come somehow to cherish her birth mother who indeed loved (and, I imagine) loves her now, day by day.

Ford's story is, of course, prelude to urging us to ponder over our own lives in our mothers' wombs. After reminding us how the bewombed John greeted the bewombed Jesus when Mary came to visit Elizabeth, Ford tells us that admittedly his and our own entry "into the world may not have been so dramatic. But as Elizabeth and the baby within her greeted Mary, God greets each of us and calls us to be special personal who live by purpose-drawn lives" (56).

And then Ford lets us in on what it's like to do womb-like Vigils at Mepkin Abbey, first with a half-cup of hot coffee with honey, then the middle-of-the-night waiting, a birthing time for psalm singing. While I've had the privilege of rising with monks for Vigils many years ago, I like to remind myself that wherever I am I too can share the Church's early singing and praying. It's for that reason that, whenever possible, I slip out of bed before dawn, heat up the water kettle on the stove, measure out four tablespoons of ground-up Haitian coffee beans into a French press (my "coffee ceremony"), pour the steaming water over the beans, let things steep for a few minutes, push down the press, fill up a mug of the milk-soaked brown delight, go outside and then settle into Vigils. It's a wonderful way to begin the day, well before dawn, in the birthing hour of each day. To say an early good-morning to God and the day, I generally use one of two books: Phyllis Tickle's The Night Offices: Prayers for the Hourse from Sunset to Sunrise or my Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary. I try not to be in a hurry, doing a good bit of waiting, sometimes just watching the sky light up or the birds in and around the feeders begin their morning chorus and seed-snacking. A good bit of the time I just like to be quiet, sort of empty, sitting in near silence. For me--and may well be for you too--it's the best part of the day.

While describing his own Vigil time at Mepkin, Ford does it just right to emphasis that he's "part of something bigger, wider, deeper than [his] individual experience" (58). That emphasis and understanding of prayer is on the mark. There's no special piety in all of this; nothing remarkable is happening; "performance matters little," Ford says. We're simply letting God open up the day for us. When we sing (or say) the psalms, there's lots of quiet, "long silences," Ford calls them, so that we can attend to the Spirit's slipping us into the verses of Psalms and Scripture. The whole of Vigils is a sort of easing into the day, a slow stretching of our souls, certainly "no rush to fill emptiness with words" (59). We might read a sermon or homily. I often read a bit of a book, one like this one we talking about. Prayers and intercessions rise up and are offered. And when things are done, we go back to the kitchen (perhaps to bed if that's best), maybe a walk, whatever. So God has delivers you and me into the day.

Chapter 2: The Birthing Hour / Time before Time (50-54)

Chapter 2 is not nearly as long as Chapter 1 and therefore a tad easier to digest; only eleven pages, it's a fine introduction to Vigils, that pre-dawn time when some Christians climb out bed to remind themselves that even in the darkest of darks, God is with them.

As Ford begins this chapter, he describes what it's like to sing the Psalms at 3:20 a.m. with monks at Mepkin Abbey "by the Cooper River in South Carolina" (50). I've never been to Mepkin Abbey, but I've known about the place for some time.

The pre-dawn prayer-time, called Vigils, reminds us that we all live in "benighted world" (51); that is, all of us live in some kind of darkness, and Vigils gives us an opportunity "to connect with that dark but grace-filled mystery in which we are immerses" (qtd. Steindel-Rast, 51). In short,

Upon making that observation, Ford proceeds to tells us about his experience walking a labyrinth, a centuries-old guide to meditation walking, notably famous "in the floor of [the] ancient cathedral in Chartres, France" (51). As a physical/spiritual experience, walking "labyrinthingly" requires that we ask our bodies to join us in prayer, and when encouraged to enter the labyrinth, Ford found himself meditating on his "pre-birth time." Here Ford's story becomes exceptionally personal as he re-imagines what it must of been like for his unmarried mother to live through that dark time in her life when she was sent away pregnant to give birth to her (can we say it? bastard was the word they used back then) son. In Vigils and when walking the labyrinth, Ford recalls the "the darkness of the womb," beautifully described in Psalm 139. In his pre-dawn time and prayers, Ford realizes, as the Psalm tells him, that "God was contemplating us before we were born" (53).

Ford has found that his pre-dawn prayers, when he makes his "own Vigils time and remember[s] God's presence," are important in his life. Vigils, however he observes the prayer-hour, reminds him "to pay attention to the God who is at work in our lives even before we were born" (54).

More about Chapter 2 tomorrow. But, for now, perhaps you'd like to comment on Ford's thoughts and story--and yours.

Chapter 1: Paying Attention / The Hours of Our Lives

Chapter 1 is thirty pages long (19-49), and Ford has divided it up into the following sixteen short sections, each about two pages:

• An introduction (19-20)
• The Benedictine Hours (20-22)
• An Invitation to Practice the Hours (22-23)
• Pay Attention (23-25)
• Paying Attention to the Other (25-26)
• The God Who Pays Attention (26-28)
• The God Who Attends to Us (28-29)
• The Mindfulness of God (29-32)
• What Would It Be Like If God Did Not Pay Attention? (32-35)
• Welcoming God's Attention--Or Not (35-37)
• The Qualities of Attention (37-40)
• Can We Learn to Be Attentive (40-42)
• Stepping into Attentiveness (42-44)
• Attentiveness and Advent: Landmarks and Skylights (44-46)
• Practicing Attentiveness: What Have Been the Stars in Your Journey (47)
• One Who Paid Attention: Simone Weil on a Postage Stamp (48-49)

As I looked over the chapter and started to read, I found that my own attention was drawn into some sections more than others; and I suspect those of you who are reading The Attentive Life may share something of the same experience. So to start our conversation, perhaps we can be satisfied simply to tell one another which section or sections got our attention. And why.

I'll start off by saying that I found "The God Who Pays Attention" provocative because I was unacquainted with "The Powers of Ten," that series of images which Ford and granddaughter found awesome. And while awesome, I found the incredible scale of things intellectually and psychologically daunting; to know that in both directions from where I see my fingers typing, there is an infinity of worlds, both up and down, out and in, left and right, so re-orients my sense of the universe that at the moment I don't know where to begin being attentive. There's so much to attend to! Too much! How can I begin to have an attentive life when I'm in the middle of infinities? To what or whom am I attentive? That's a question I find myself asking tonight.