Practising presence 6: the ordinary miracle of touch

Well, here we are turning to the last of our senses: touch.

I think of touch as the rebel of the senses: refusing to fit in a box, escaping easy definition.

 

Think about it...

Is “touch” restricted to intentional feeling, as when we actively feel something with our hands or feet or some other part of our bodies? Or does touching also include the sensation of being touched? Or perhaps the distinction between active and passive touching is irrelevant because it’s impossible to touch and not be touched. Is what we are touching, always touching us back?

As well as evading simple definition, touch refuses to stay distinct from the other four senses.

This is clearest in taste where we touch with our mouths and it’s fairly easy to accept in smell, since the air must touch our nostrils to spark neural pathways. And yet even vision and hearing involve touching. For us to see, light needs to touch our retinas, for us to hear, vibrations must touch our ear drums. Most of the time we don’t feel this (so, depending on your definition of touch, perhaps it’s not strictly touching), but sometimes we do. If you need convincing, think about how your eyes hurt if you look at something too bright or how you feel ringing in your ears after a concert or other loud event.

Without touch there is no sensation. All day, every day we are both touched and touching with every sensory organ available to us.

While sight is the sense most human societies have prioritised, I have a hunch that touch is the central sense.

How you feel about the centrality of touch probably reveals something of how you feel about what most of us think of when we hear the word "touch" - physical contact with another human being. Touch is not everyone’s favoured love language. And yet we all need to be touched. We all need a certain amount of touch to feel secure. Touch starvation in early years leads to anxiety and depression but a lack of touch at any time has negative health implications.

A longing for the experience of human touch cannot be remedied any other way. In spiritual direction, people sometimes talk about loneliness but it’s not always a felt absence of Divine presence that they are experiencing. Time and again, I hear “I know I’m not alone, I know that I am “held”. But where are the arms to comfort me?” Spiritualised holding is all very well but when our bodies are hungry to be touched, only physical touch will do.

Perhaps this shared longing for a tactile encounter with the Divine goes some way to explaining why Jesus healed through touch. Not because touch was necessary for supernatural healing but because Love sees and knows our need to be touched. As both Augustine and Aquinas explain, miracles do not violate nature but go beyond the order usually observed in nature. By healing through touch, Jesus both honours and miraculously intensifies the innate healing quality of touch. 

Not everyone longs for healing from what makes us different  or society says is “wrong”. Jesus honours this by never forcing healing. People come to him to be healed rather than he to them and he respects their agency by asking questions ("What do you want me to do for you?" Mark 10.51). I wonder, though, if any of those who came forward for healing, came because they simply wanted to be with the loving presence they recognised as embodied in Jesus. I wonder if some came longing not for supernatural healing but for the ordinary miracle of being touched - that whole-making or perhaps whole-revealing healing of being held by someone you trust. A healing from disconnection that affirms that, yes, you are known, you are accepted, you are loved, you do belong.

When directees begin to notice their hunger for human touch, I offer lots of space. We welcome the feelings and we wander around in the stories they tell. And then, if it feels right, I might gently offer an invitation to explore what is holding them now. The chair, the floor, the air, their clothing, their own arms. If we are in person, I ask if they would like a hug. It’s not supernatural but it is healing.

This week, my invitation is to be curious about what is touching you or offering itself to be touched. Notice texture, heat and pressure - all those wonderful experiences made possible through touch. Ask yourself what is holding you and play with paying attention to the feel of your clothes against your skin, the support of your seat, the ground beneath your feet. Notice the feel of your own touch and if you are fortunate to hold and be held by someone you trust, receive the ordinary miracle of its healing. 

As you touch and are touched, you may like to see if you can receive it all as a sacrament - a physical sign of a spiritual reality. A witness to the Love that holds you and me and all in one sacred embrace.

Jen x

Practising presence 5: centering eating

Years ago, I took an eight week mindfulness course. Every Tuesday evening we’d gather and practise together. Mostly we learnt how to be still, to observe our thoughts, to bring awareness to our inner life.

As well as teaching mindfulness, the instructor was a chocolatier, making artisan chocolates which he sold through a local deli. I’d tried these chocolates before but at £2 a pop they were out of my price range. When he announced that the following week we’d be sampling his chocolates and practising mindful eating, I was thrilled. Finally, an opportunity to gorge myself.

I was wrong. In the thirty minutes we practised mindful eating, I ate one chocolate.  

Our class began with a short presentation on the slow and highly involved chocolate making process.  Next, we passed a box of the handmade chocolates around the room so we could notice the shapes, the patterns, the subtle tonal differences. 

We patiently waited until we were allowed to choose a chocolate. I chose a dark chocolate caramel - domed and glossy, nestled in paper cup. I held it in my hand like precious treasure.  

We started with looking, then progressed to sniffing. Eventually, I was allowed to touch the tip of my tongue to the chocolate's shell. If we’d chosen a filled chocolate (which I had), we were invited to take a bite. Then, at last, we were told to carefully place our chocolates on our tongues and let them melt. 

It was the slowest I’d ever eaten a chocolate and I can still recall the contrast of flavour and texture between the crisp, bitter shell and sweet, syrupy centre. When it dissolved in my mouth I felt a strange mix of awe and grief. 

You’d think our foray into mindful eating would have ended with swallowing but, no, we continued to sit in silence, noticing the sensations in our mouths, gently releasing any urge to rush on (or locate the chocolate box).

I’ve tried to hold on to the lessons of this workshop. I’ve taught my children how to eat mindfully (see video below) and occasionally, if we’re gifted a really nice box of chocolates, we practise the whole thing as a family. But most of the time, our eating is anything but mindful. Instead of slowing down to savour, we’re eating in a hurry; grabbing lunch, compulsively eating crisps, demolishing our dinners. 

When I eat like this I rarely feel satisfied so over the past few years I’ve been playfully exploring how I can bring more slowness and awareness to my eating. It’s very much a work in progress but basically it goes like this:

Notice. Pause. Taste.

I notice when I’m becoming distracted and put down my cutlery (or the bag of crisps). If I’m reading my phone or composing an essay in my head, I gently put that down too. I breathe. Then, I take a bite and chew. Slowly.

I call this practice centering eating because of the way it echoes centering prayer - a practice of contemplative prayer that seeks to guide us into the deeps of silence where we rest in the divine Presence, beneath thoughts. There are, of course, (huge) differences between the practices of centering prayer and centering eating but when I eat in this slow and mindful way, I feel the echo throughout my being. Both practices draw me into the present where I am available to encounter and be encountered. 

Central to the practice of centering prayer is the use of the sacred word. This can be any word or short phrase and it doesn't have any magical property or role. In fact, teachers of centering prayer suggest choosing a neutral word that isn't connected with lots of thoughts or memories. Some people choose a single word like "still", others go for a short phrase like “let go” or "be loved". This word or phrase acts as a sign or reminder of our intention to be present. When we become aware of thoughts (or feelings or images - which are also considered to be thoughts), we gently release them by inwardly repeating the sacred word.  This isn’t because thoughts are bad but because during the “sit” of centering prayer, our intention is to simply be present. The sacred word helps to return us to that naked intent to be present so that we can drop deeper into the silent depths of our being where we are open to the activity and presence of the Divine.

In centering prayer, my sacred word is usually “peace” or “let go”. In centering eating, my sacred word is the flavour and texture of the food I’m eating. As I chew, I release the hurry and mental chatter and allow the food to draw me into the present.  

When I eat this way, I notice two things: I feel more satisfied and I feel more connected. Satisfied because I have really tasted what I’ve eaten, connected because I have fully embraced my embodied dependence on food, as well as the land, the animals, the hands that have helped bring this meal to my plate (or crisps to the bag). If I’ve been eating with others, I also feel more connected with them. It's as though my full presence has allowed the meal time to be truly shared. Satisfied and connected, I find that gratitude flows organically - a prayer of thanks that springs from both heart and gut.

For Christians, the centre of communal life is a shared meal of bread and wine. A meal that, depending on your theology, symbolises or embodies Jesus’ giving of himself. I know that some people prefer to keep the Eucharist as a uniquely sacred meal but my experience of centering eating has thinned the divide between ordinary eating and sacred eating.* When I honour my eating with presence, all mealtimes become an opportunity to receive nourishment as a gift lovingly given and encounter the sacred through taste. 

The recommended sit time for centering prayer is twenty minutes twice a day. I’m struck by the fact that twenty minutes is about how long it takes to eat a meal. This week I’m receiving all my mealtimes as opportunities to practise centering eating. Perhaps you might like to join me.

If, though, food feels complicated or triggering, please go gently. Perhaps there’s another, more manageable way you could bring awareness to your tasting. It could be as simple as closing your eyes when you take your first sip of water in the morning while you bring awareness to the particular taste of the water and how it feels on your tongue. It could even be the taste of air. No true spiritual practice cultivates shame. Do what works for you and just see what happens.

Jen x
 

* As Richard Rohr explains, this thinning of the distinction between formal sacrament and ordinary moment is exactly what is meant to happen. The mysterious Presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharist reveals at a microcosmic level what is true in the whole macrocosm: Christ is Present. The invitation is always and everywhere to taste and digest that Presence so that we may live wholly at one with it. To read more from Rohr on this click here.

Practising Presence 4: read the world with your nose

Smell is the underdog of the senses.

Even though it's our only sense to fully develop in utero and has an incredible capacity to detect emotion and stimulate memory, smell is our most unappreciated sense.

Consider this: when the marketing firm McCann Worldgroup surveyed thousands of young people about what they value most, more than half of the 16 to 22 year-olds said they would rather give up their sense of smell than their phones or laptops.

Maybe you can dismiss this as a sign of young people’s (over)attachment to technology but their devaluing of smell is part of a trend in Western thought. Smell has been denigrated by almost all Western philosophers stretching back to the Greeks but with particular venom during the Enlightenment.  "Which organic sense is the most ungrateful and also seems the most dispensable?" asked Immanuel Kant. Yep, you guessed it: smell.

The sad news is that devaluing smell becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It turns out that the less we pay attention to smells, the more we lose the ability to detect smells.

The good news is that we can reclaim and strengthen our sense of smell and it’s actually very simple. According to scent expert Dawn Goldworm, our sense of smell is like a muscle and it gets a workout every time we notice and name what we're smelling. 

 Goldworm explains:

“Just pay attention with your nose. When you are walking down the street, consciously indicate what you are smelling … the more you use [your nose], the stronger it gets.”

When I imagine someone paying attention with their nose as they walk down the street, I can’t help but think of my dog, Teddy, trotting along with his nose close to the ground. Like most dogs, Teddy sniffs with abandon. He’ll sniff anything and, if he’s not sure he’s getting a clear enough whiff, he’ll give it a little lick too. 

If you're a dog owner, you'll know that this constant sniffing can get rather tiring (do you really need to sniff every lamppost?) but I’ve found I’ve become more sympathetic since I’ve realised that his sniffing is his primary way of reading the world. When he’s sniffing yet another lamppost, he’s reading it for clues about who was there and what they ate for breakfast. When he cocks his leg in response, he’s writing a note back.

If paying attention with my nose is a pathway into heightened smelling and Teddy is my most nose-attentive companion, I’m wondering what might happen if I tried following his lead (no pun intended). What if I let myself read the world through my nose? This week, I’m giving it a go and I’m inviting you to join me. As always, you are welcome to follow the invitation however you feel inclined but I’ll be using these  four principles (all of which I’ve learnt from Teddy):

1. Sniff the air, especially outside or when something’s cooking.

2. Follow the smell and be willing to go out of your way to find the source.

3. Savour the smell by lingering long enough to really take it in and experimenting with short sharp sniffs as well as deeper inhales.

4. Respond by inwardly naming what you're smelling or what you're feeling or remembering in response.

I’m looking forward to trying this out and I’m curious to see what happens but, I have to be honest with you, I feel a bit nervous to offer this to you as this week's soak in presence and a pathway into prayer. I mean, you're probably thinking: 
 

 How on earth cansmellingbe a spiritual practice?  

In sitting with this, I’ve realised that any resistance to connecting smell with prayer probably says more about the day and age we live in than it does about scent or the capacity of smell to connect us with the Divine. It may seem strange to talk about smelling God in the 21st century but in the Middle Ages this wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow any more than “seeing” God or “hearing” God.

Partly, this was because they lived in a more intensely smelly world; without deodorants and modern plumbing, medieval folk were far more familiar with the scent of body odour and decay than we are today. It would have been more natural to talk about smelling God because it would have been more natural to talk about smells in general. In addition, sacred spaces were marked by smells - in particular, the smell of incense, which would have pervaded all churches and cathedrals.

Researching the connection between scent and the sacred further I found this fascinating article What does God smell like? If you have time, I thoroughly recommend you have a read. As well as potting a history of the connection between saintliness and unusual smells (apparently the bones of St Nicholas smelt sweet), it touches on the importance of scent for worship, suggesting that scent can build communal spiritual memories across the centuries. 

All this makes me wonder…

What are we missing by detaching the sacred from scent?

If we can encounter the Divine when we look at a sunset or listen to the lapping of waves, why can’t we encounter the Divine through the scent of honeysuckle or freshly baked bread? 

Why shouldn't we be able to connect with God through our sense ofsmelljust as readily, yet mysteriously, as with any other? 

What might happen if we allowed our sense of smell to be a pathway into connection with the Divine Presence?

Just as I finished writing this, my daughter Phoebe came in and gave me a hug. As I held her, I smelt her hair and then, because I've just been writing about lingering in smell, I smelt again. I tried to name the scent but all I got was "joy" and "love". Don't ask me how, it's a mystery. But today, for me, she smelt divine. 

Jen x

Practising Presence 3: A Soak in Sound

Today we head into the second week of our adventure in being here now.

This week, as well as the ongoing invitation to take a daily dose of presence by being interruptible, I'm encouraging you to bring your awareness to your hearing and take a soak in sound. 
 

As always, if this sensory pathway into presence isn’t available or doesn’t appeal to you, please adapt or replace the practice to suit you. I truly believe that any pathway into presence is as good as any other.

I love the phrase “a soak in sound”. It reminds me of a sound bath - something I’m yet to experience but am eager to try. In case it’s new to you, a sound bath is a immersive experience during which participants lie down and are “bathed” in the sound waves generated by instruments or the human voice. An ancient history and claims of deep relaxation make the experience attractive to me but until I can find a class, I’m going to continue with what already helps me to soak in sound…

...walking beneath trees and listening to the birds.

A friend recently asked me what I do on my daily walks and I was genuinely confused. He clarified what he meant by asking what I listen to while I walk - podcasts or music. The question surprised me because it never occurs to me to listen to either; not because I don’t enjoy podcasts or music but because when I’m walking in nature I want the sound track to be nature.

Reflecting on why this never feels boring, I’ve realised something: every season sounds different. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the quiet creakiness of winter is slowly giving way to the bright, staccato notes of spring. Soon spring will crescendo into the happy din of summer before mellowing out into the more subtle rustle of autumn. I leave my headphones at home because I don't want to miss my daily sound bath. 

My nature guide tells me that this week adult blackbirds are singing their full song instead of their subsong (the shorter version sung outside of breeding season). Apparently they are best heard just after sunset so, wanting to hear them, I’ve been trying to go for a bonus early evening walk around the park. Failing that, I've been sticking my head out the kitchen door while cooking dinner. To be honest, I’m not great at identifying birdsong but I think I am hearing them. Either way, it's a beautiful way to celebrate another sundown and another little opportunity to soak in sound. I’ve noticed that not being able to see the birds helps me listen. My vision surrendered, I listen for the sounds that may come from any direction. 

I love nature’s sound bath but I also love music, especially live music performed somewhere with good acoustics. I used to sing in choirs and enjoyed the experience of being surrounded by sound, especially when we were in a big, echoey space. One summer, we went on tour to Mexico City and sang in a cave. The sound went on and on, the audio version of a hall of mirrors. When it finally went quiet, no one wanted to break the silence. It was as though the cave was still singing, just too quietly for us to hear. Nobody wanted to interrupt.

People talk about hearing God and I wonder what they mean. Because I’m a spiritual director, I get to ask and rarely do people describe an audible voice. It varies, of course, but when people unpack their experiences of “hearing God”, what they mostly find is an inner knowing that they intuitively recognise and trust. But even though it’s rare for someone to describe a sensory experience of hearing God, I wonder if that’s more because we’re too narrowly defining an encounter with God through our hearing. Perhaps it’s more common than we think to hear God in the midst of listening to nature, to music, to each other. Not as a separate voice but as a vibration within all voices, a resonance our souls recognise as real and here. I wonder whether that’s what we were hearing in the stillness of that cave.

This week, I’m not going to suggest a particular practice. Instead, I invite you to live with your ears open, ready for opportunities to soak in sound. Explore nature’s sound bath, immerse yourself in your favourite music, notice the melody of your friend’s laughter. Listen for what mindfulness practitioners call “the sounds beneath the sounds” and leave space for vibrations to settle. Don’t work too hard or force your experiences to mean anything, just receive the sounds and notice the resonance in your body and in your soul.

As always, you are very welcome to let me know how it goes. I would love to hear from you.

Jen x

Practising Presence 2: Seeing Like an Artist

How has practising presence been for you this week? What drew your attention and invited you into the here and now? What did you notice in yourself?

Some of you have been sharing photos of your practice and I’ve loved the opportunity to honour what you've honoured with your presence. I’ve added some photos to our shared album which you can view here. If you have photos that you’d like to add, please do send them. There’s something beautiful about gathering them together in one place - a shared remembering that re-members us into the present where we all belong. If you’ve been struggling to be present, maybe you can sit with one of these photos for a couple of minutes and see what it draws from you.

Reflecting on my own practice this week, I've noticed an interesting inversion. In trying to be awake for something that will draw me into the present, I’ve become more present to everything. I know this is happening because at the end of the day, I remember more. Not the big things but the small. Things like the colour of the blossom in next door's front garden, the smell of my coffee, the sound of my daughter’s laugh when the dog tried to lick her face, the moment of connection when I met the lady’s eyes at the checkout. It’s a lovely reversal that helps to take the pressure off what happens when I pause what I’m doing and practise letting myself be interrupted. Because these moments of presence are part of a flow of presence that’s accessible all the time, I don’t need to worry so much about what happens (or doesn’t happen). I need help with this because my longing for genuine presence and authentic connection means that in those moments of bringing my full attention to something or someone I really, really want to do it right. Knowing that my desire to be present is what’s helping me be more present helps me relax into enjoying the moment for what it is and loosen my grip on wanting to get some kind of result.

If, like me, you’re struggling with judging your practice (i.e. trying to make it mean something or wondering if more should be happening), I recommend you befriend your breath. When I’ve noticed good-girl-got-to-do-it-right Jen rearing her head, I’ve found it helpful to remember to breathe (obvious, perhaps, but true). I also like to have a few words that I can inwardly join with my inhale and exhale to anchor me in both my intention to be present and my trust that the mysterious and abiding More that I name 'God' is already here. These are breath prayers and this week I've been playing with using words from Wendell Berry's poem The Wild Geese. With my inhale I inwardly repeat "what we need...." and with my exhale "....is here". I also like to use " here I am... in the presence of God". 
 

This week, as well as the ongoing invitation to make a habit of being interruptible, I’m offering you a soak in presence. This is a simple invitation to bring your awareness to one of your senses and savour the present through that sense. If this sense is unavailable to you, please feel free to adapt the practice to suit you. All is offered as invitation and any pathway into presence is just as good as any other.

The sense we’re beginning with is sight. If this sense is available to you, there's a good chance it functions as your most dominant sense. While research at the University of York has suggested that the classical hierarchy of senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell - may not be true across all cultures, it confirmed that visual dominance is a universal characteristic of all languages. And yet, even when we (over)rely on our sense of sight, most of the time we do not see well. Not because our vision isn’t 20/20 but because our looking tends to be less a way of receiving the world and more a kind of labelling practice. Learning the names of things seems to shut down our seeing.

Think about it: how often does our looking turn into an inner naming? We go for a walk and as we look, we think: there’s a tree, there’s the sky, there’s Mr so-and-so, there’s a puddle. It’s all so familiar. We look on autopilot and have to work to notice the variety of shades of green in the hedge, the way the light catches the girl's hair, the patterns in bark, the harmony of shapes in the skyline. We lose the pre-cognitive wonder and awe we once had in abundance as babies and very young children when the world was not so much in front of us to be neatly named and understood but entwined with us to be explored and enjoyed (if you need convincing, watch a baby discover her hands).

The good news is that, even though we become forgetful in seeing things beyond their names, we can reclaim a more wonder-filled way of looking. This is a seeing that allows us to glimpse what Richard Rohr calls the “hidden wholeness” of things and is critical if we are to love neighbour as self. Artists are our guides here because artists know how to see. Not through labels but with pre-cognitive wonder that honours our entwining with the world. As French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty explains, artists recognise that the world is not something separate that we observe but something that we are emerged in, that we encounter. In his essay ‘Eye and Mind’, he writes that painters are birthed through the visible so that their art doesn’t represent the world so much as guides us into the experience of being intertwined with things as part of the flesh or fabric of the world. According to Merleau-Ponty, paintings break the "skin of things” to communicate to us something that goes deeper than we can explain and because of this, art “awakens powers dormant in ordinary vision” so that we see the world afresh, without that labelling tendency that keeps everything at a distance.

These may seem like strange ideas but spend any time trying to draw or paint what’s in front of you and I think you'll get a sense of what he means. As you draw or paint what you see, you begin to really look. You open yourself to the experience, to receive what is being revealed. Eventually, you may even let go of trying to represent what you’re painting and just allow your art making to be a sharing in what you see. If this happens, and you can muster the courage to look at your finished piece without judgement, you’ll find that what you have is not just an image but a portal into the very experience of seeing.

It’s because making art helps us to see that this week, for our soak in presence, I’m recommending that you take a few minutes to draw or paint. Find something that you want to take a long look at, pick up a pen or a paintbrush and let your looking guide your hand. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHETHER YOU’RE GOOD AT ART. Even if you haven’t drawn anything since primary/elementary school, this practice is for you. The purpose is not to produce a great work of art but to help you linger in your looking long enough to really see. To prove that I mean this, once you’ve finished your art I want you to rip it up or burn it. Not because it’s rubbish but because the point isn’t the picture but the act of looking. (If, when you get to this stage, you find you want to keep your picture, you can. Just don't forget that it's the looking - not the art - that's the point.)

This practice doesn’t need to take long and it definitely doesn’t need fancy materials (in fact, you’re more likely to try it if you tell yourself you’re just going to scribble on a scrap of paper for 2 minutes), but if you have a go I think you might be surprised. Every expressive art class I’ve participated in has resulted in people being amazed by the calm, the creativity, the joy that is unlocked when they give their inner artist permission to play.

Whether you think of yourself as artistic or not, have a go and see what happens. Who knows, maybe it will help return you to that childlike way of being in the world when you were present, not as an observer but as a fleck in the fabric of being, tenderly held in the cosmic arms of God.

Jen x

ps If you want to read more Merleau-Ponty, you can find his essay 'Eye and Mind' in the collection of essays The Primacy of Perception (Evanston: Northwestern, 1964). The quotes are from pages pp181-182 and Merleau-Ponty borrows the phrase "skin of things" from poet and painter Henri Michaux.

Practising Presence 1: Let Yourself be Interrupted

Today we begin our adventure in presence. I've never been so excited for the start of Lent. 

I’m writing this with my dog on my lap which I’m finding rather inconvenient given that his paws are actually on my laptop. My frustration is a good reminder that I need this journey as much as you. While I'm completely sold on the importance of presence, I continue to find it hard to be present to life as it is. I'm easily distracted (mainly by inner chatter) and yet, ironically, I’m not good at being interrupted. I wish I could say that this only applies to my dog but it doesn’t. My children were on holiday last week and I wasn't as present to them as I would like to have been. I started to go down a shame spiral but then realised that being honest about my tendency to avoid the present is probably a good place to begin this adventure. All this to say: I’m glad I have 40 days to practise presence with you.

I’m a big fan of slow beginnings so there’s no particular practice this week, just a gentle invitation to begin taking a daily dose of presence. (If you're new here or you've forgotten what I mean by 'daily dose of presence', you can click here to read my previous newsletter which explains how this adventure will work.)
 

Each day this week, see if you can be awake for a moment that invites you to move into the present. Don’t try to conjure up an experience, just let yourself be interrupted by whatever it is that draws your attention and then be open to see what happens. 

There are no rules or success criteria so please don’t put any effort into judging your practice. Simply let yourself be wooed by life as it happens. You can practise presence for 20 seconds or 20 minutes, it's all golden time.

Afterwards, I encourage you to take a photo or make a sketch or write a note as a reminder of your sacred moment of presence. We’ll be bringing these together in our final feast so try to keep them in the same place (I recommend creating an album in your photo app and adding photos of sketches and notes as well as regular photos).

As I share this invitation to be interruptible, I’m reminded of both Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch who place great importance on the practice of paying attention. This is a loving presence or open waiting that helps us to experience things the way they really are and not just as we wish they were or assume them to be. In The Sovereignty of Good, Murdoch describes how paying attention is sometimes provoked rather than planned and offers this little autobiographical example:

"I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious to my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important." 
 

I love this as an example of the practice of being interruptible because it’s so simple, so ordinary, so highly relatable. There’s no grand revelation and yet there’s still a sense that something important has happened. By sending her attention outwards, Murdoch opens herself to be reordered, or "unselfed" as she calls it. Afterwards, she finds that her inner turmoil has been soothed and yet it's something she’s allowed rather than managed.
 

For Murdoch at her window, it was a kestrel that drew her attention but for Weil it's often academic study that forms the basis of her examples of paying attention. For you, it could be the sky, or your child, or a shadow, or the skin of your own hand. Whatever it is, let it interrupt you. Give yourself to it fully and see what happens. As Weil and Murdoch will tell you, there's no practice more central to a life well and lovingly lived than the practice of being fully present.


I'll be sharing some photos of my adventure in presence through my Instagram account. If you're willing to share your photos, I'd love to see them. You can tag me on Instagram or send them to me and I'll add them to this shared album.  I've started us off by adding one of my dog, Teddy, practising presence with a heron. 


Until next week,

Jen x

Practising Presence: A 40 day adventure in being here now.

Earlier this year, I noticed I was feeling drawn to share an offering during the season of Lent - those 40 wilderness days that lead us into the joy of Easter.

To begin with I wasn’t sure what that offering would look like - it was simply a vague longing to offer…. something.

I knew I wanted to offer something prayerful, embodied and simple. I also wanted it to have depth without being heavy or burdensome.

I let myself dream and slowly a seed of an idea began to sprout and then grow. This adventure into presence is the fruit.

I am so excited to share this journey with you, offering my reflections on presence as prayer and inviting you to practise being here, now.

Whatever your beliefs and wherever you are in your journey, I hope you will feel welcome and included. I understand and name the practice of presence as prayer but you don’t have to. Perhaps you’re here because you have a hunch that there’s something soulful and good about becoming really present. Or perhaps you’re a pray-er who would like to think of presence as prayer but can’t quite see how it counts. Or maybe you used to be a pray-er but you have fallen out of love with prayer. To all of you, I offer you the same invitation. Give it a go and see what happens; this is an adventure, it’s meant to be unpredictable.

One of the wonderful thing about praying through presence is that you don’t have to straighten your thoughts or find words to express feelings. You can simply show up, offering yourself to whatever or whoever is right in front of you trusting that, yes, you are in the presence of the Divine, however you name it. Even better, prehaps, you don’t need to know who or what you’re praying to - you can let “God” be as vague as you like. In fact, as we’ll see, praying with presence asks us to hold lightly all our assumptions and be open to encountering a mysterious abiding More that reveals itself everywhere partly and nowhere fully. The full Presence is always escaping our grasp, all we can do is bring our presence to what is present to us here and now.