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