Reflections - Attention Gives Meaning

Attention Gives Meaning

What leads to us to sin or to grace?

I would like to start with a personal anecdote. I am hoping my wife will not mind. It is about us. Before our marriage, my wife and I, we both went to St Patrick's Church for Sunday mass for years together. Note: Years together; Not together. We did not know each other, then.

St Patrick's, built in 1844, is one of the oldest churches in Bangalore. It is at the very centre of the city.  Perhaps, Winston Churchill (who stayed at the Bangalore Club nearby when serving as a British officer stationed here) would have come to Patrick's, if not for mass, at least out of curiosity.

Commercial Street, MG Road and Brigade Road are Patrick Church's locational kith and kin. In Bangalore of the 80s, these locations were like magnet for the young of both genders to congregate and take in all the delights the streets had to offer: fashion stores, movie theatres and eating joints.

Among the youth were my cousins. They were studying engineering at Ramaiah College on the outskirts of Bangalore, Yeswanthpur. On Sundays my cousins would wind their way from the outreaches to wander, shop, eat on MG Road and Brigades, and pray at St Patrick’s Church.

All the years that my future wife and I went to St Patrick's Church we never laid our eyes on each other. Perhaps our eyes were glued only on the Lord at the altar. I speak for myself here.

My wife has two sisters. The trio when they arrived in church as with girls of their age, were all dressed fashionably for the times. My young cousins, however, had eyes with wide peripheral vision that took in more than the Eucharist at the altar. For they had noticed the trio. Why didn’t I will be one of the mysteries of my life.

To what we direct our attention gives it meaning and becomes a motivating device. The reason we come to church or go elsewhere are choices we make by the attention we give to entities, artefacts or activities. This is true, but unrealized, as a key factor of our lives. 

My wife and I, had an arranged marriage. Meaning we had not met before we did meet. This meeting was in a formal setting. We did not have to, but we did decide, with just one sitting, around whom we wish to build the rest of our life. Sounds very dental and just as precarious to health.

For me and my wife there may have been three to four such trying times of rejection and acceptance until the final mutual acceptance.

No life altering decision is so chancy as the rituals of an arranged marriage. The axiom, ‘’marriages are made in heaven’’ has a ring of truth. It’s like playing a blind hand when stakes are high in a game of cards. You win a jackpot or live with your losses, or play another hand.

Back to my cousins and their flirtatious interests (healthy at their age) in any moving skirts or bellbottoms (fashion of the times). Their interests, all said and done, were benign.

Now to the crux of the point that ‘to what you give attention you give meaning’.

In Genesis 3:3-7 we learn how the serpent tricked Eve. What was an innocuous fruit hanging on a tree in the middle of the garden, no different from any other fruit, was made especially, seductively special?

 

Craftily, the serpent got Eve to focus on that ONE FRUIT in the garden with everything else recessed and out-of-focus. The serpent like one of the finest advertising agents, expanded on the special benefits of that particular fruit – knowledge of good and evil – what only gods then had.

 

To Eve, what was ordinary became glorious. A must have. Fast moving. Last one in stock. Click now before it is gone. She plucked and ate it. With exceptional generosity strange to have in a fallen state, she also shared the forbidden fruit with slumbering Adam, who woken from sleep was hungry and happy to partake in Eve’s offering.

 

No other narration of an event in the history of mankind captures the core essence of the simple truth: to what you give attention to that you give meaning.

 

Let this truth sink in and become a part of your watchful armory against all forms of temptation and sin. If not for that fateful day, we would all be spiritually walking with our heavenly Father and when he calls us (Gen 3:8), ‘’Where are you?’’. We can, like the young Samuel (1 Samuel 3:3) say, ‘’Here I am’’.