15. Focus

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask you for a pardon of my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My mother and my kinet saying, "Joseph, my Father and Lord, my guardian angel, into the seat of the Lord." This meditation is about brushing our teeth, where our thoughts are, when we are brushing our teeth. Maybe there's more relevant over the summer as well, because we're just a little bit less pressure on us and we've a little bit more time in our hands. How we use that time, we might feel a little bit more to throw away. Jesus has this great line for us, where he says, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also, where your treasure is." So this idea of brushing our teeth, because those who are brushing our teeth and then kind of our mind is nowhere in particular, what then our mind goes to where our heart is. It's like a test. Do you want to know where your heart is? Well, where it is a goal when you're brushing your teeth? That's where my heart is. St. Augustine has a line where he says, "It's in Latin, it's kind of famous. "Pondus maim, amor maius, which is my weight, is my love." Or another way of putting that is, the heart is always in motion towards what it loves. So in the same way, a stone on a hillside is going to start rolling down, because gravity is constantly pulling it downwards. Maybe it's going quickly or maybe it's going very slowly, but the stone is always moving down. My pondus maim, my weight, my weight is my love. My love is always moving me towards my treasure. Is it the treasure of the stone as to be as low as possible? The treasure of my heart is to be with the things I delight in, my love. So the same question, "Where is my heart? Where are my thoughts? Where are my random thoughts during the course of the day? Even now as we do a time of prayer, because just because we are in front of you, Lord, in the Tabernacle, it doesn't mean that our thoughts are even with you. Or even that my heart is with you. I might be thinking of my day organizing my day of what's for breakfast, of a minion things, because that's where my heart is. The things that we love, like a little baby, you see little babies, little infants, and somebody keeps a brain's a ball or something. And the little infant stretches out. He sees the colorful, the colorful thing, and he immediately stretches out towards the ball. He wants that. That's interesting. That's delightful. And stretching out, in Latin, is tenderay. To tenderay is to stretch out. So the little infant tends towards the ball that fills him with delight. And from that we get the word attention, attention. Literally what we stretch out towards mentally, what is our little colorful ball that we stretch out towards? Where do we put our attention? And of course it kind of works both ways, because you put your attention to what delights you, and eventually you delight in what you put your attention to. So by attending to something, that becomes the source of your delight. The thing you strain out towards. So we think of that again, what am I attending towards? These random moments of the day. Or maybe not even very random, because it's not just when we're brushing our teeth. Perhaps the whole day, what am I attending towards? It would be very interesting. Like our phones can give us a readout of, we were 30% of the time on the WhatsApp, 20% of the time on Instagram, whatever it is, it can give us a readout of where our attention was actually. What we were doing on the phone, we were very interesting. We could do that with the mind. While 90% of the time you were thinking about this thing, 3% of the time you were thinking of our Lord, 0.3% of the time you were thinking about the people that you live with, something like that. Hopefully it's not like that, but that could be the readout of our attention. What you have been stretching out towards this week? What have you been seeking? Where is your heart being this week? Our Lord tells us also in the Gospel. Why do you worry about clothing? Why do you look at the lilies of the field? How do they grow? They're not the toy or spin. You've to tell you even Solomon in order to glory with not clothing like one of these. And then our Lord tells us essentially what our Lord is saying there. Seek first the things that are above. Don't let, Lord is saying don't let your attention be completely focused on your clothing or what you're going to eat. What you're going to drink. Don't let that fill your mind. These then that becomes your treasure. Your treasure can become what when I wear, what when I eat, what when I drink. And they're really very sad treasures. When you think about it, they're really sad treasures. They're so ignoble, I suppose. And they're no different. Even our Lord tells us with the birds and so on. If a person is filled by an intense interest, you could say, what they're eating. What even if we were living eating old cuisine and we were super experts in the highest cuisine in the world and so on, we're still actually not much above the seagulls that I see from my room. It was everybody seeing them from virtually every room in the city because they're everywhere. But that's, you know, where's the seagull's heart? While it's in the next little scrap, he's going to pull out of somebody's black bag and that's his treasure. Okay, and maybe my treasure is a little bit of, I don't know, some delightful little thing. But no, you know, essentially it's no different from what a seagull gets out of a black bag. And that's our treasure. That's very sad. Very sad treasure. It's very sad for it's not sad for the seagull because seagulls are not made to do anything but pull food out of black bags and wake people up at 5 o'clock in the morning. And that's all they're there for. But that's not what we're there for. I don't really speak about the highest capacity we have is where we might focus that attention. If that attention is focused ultimately on the things that are above contemplation, contemplation of the highest things, and not even just the uterine or the great ancient philosophers tell us that, that is the great dignity of man to think about and consider the highest things. Essentially the things, things that are most worth loving, not in the scraps of meat pulled out of black bags, but God, you, Lord, and also then one another. Secondly, love God with all your heart and all your mind, and then love one another, and love other such as you love yourself. There are the only things really worth our full attention, and then by extension, by thinking about things of others, or thinking about the things of God, there are many forms and there are many ways, but that is the only thing that's really worth our full attention. That's the only thing. There is a vice, you could say it was the vice of our age, and in Latin it's called kuryasitas, more or less kanyakuryosity. And that is the vice of being distracted, of directing our attention, where it shouldn't go, stretching out for the little colorful ball that we shouldn't be stretching out for. This is the waste of time, or even it actually does its damage. And that is the vice of kuryasitas, is the vice, remember, with Sodom and Gamara when the Lord reigned on the Sodom and Gamara, brinstone and fire, and a lot and his wife were told to flee, they got advanced notice, and as they're going, a lot looked back. There are a lot of wife looked back. She couldn't resist, and it's a real, it's a kind of funny case that our Lord had told them, or it's not to look back, she just can't resist and kuryosity killed the cat, as they say, and it killed lots of wife. It's amazing, she said, wow, I wonder what that's like. And she had, she just had to take a peak back, and without buying, she becomes the bitter salt. And so again for us, that's a very dramatic instance of misplaced attention. She attended to, she stretched out towards something God told her not to stretch out towards. Don't give that your attention. Don't direct your eyes towards it, because your heart shouldn't be directed towards it. And we all know that, that we don't want our heart to go somewhere, we don't send our eyes in that direction. Glances even if something we really shouldn't see, or you know, read attention, something on the phone, or whatever it might be, because the heart follows the eyes. And so if you're not supposed to look at Sodom and Gomorrah getting destroyed, don't direct your eyes towards it. If we're, and don't direct our full attention, other day obviously we eat and we drink, we love these things. But if we were directing our thoughts, we did read like directing our eyes, directing my thoughts towards what am I going to eat? Are these possessions that I have that are occupied too much of my attention? I think about it too much. I think about my entertainment too much. We give it too much of our attention, and so our heart kind of, our heart kind of seeps out through our eyes. Now it's great if we're looking at the right thing, if we're looking at you, Lord, within great, within our eyes focused on the tavernacle, because my heart will seep out in that direction, and I'm delighted. And the things that were distracted by, you know, they can be very good things. Distracted, the most famous distraction we have in sacred scripture, I suppose, is the distraction of Martha. And we're told, we're told in the gospel she was distracted with much serving. She's putting her full attention into the serving, which normally is right, but, but our door is kind of correcting her because this wasn't the time for giving that all her attention. She should have been doing what Mary was doing at that point, because the Mary, her eyes and her attention and her heart is directed solely to Jesus. And so that correction directed towards Martha, of course, it's not a question of don't do the cooking, because that's still be crazy, is rather, I suppose the correction really is, don't let the cooking be a distraction, or let the cooking be a positive distraction, a distraction towards God, and towards creatures in the good sense. So in other words, I'm attending to this job, but not because, in a certain sense, it's clear that, I don't know, in a very obvious sense, it's very clear that Martha is directing her attention towards the cooking, but without proper motive. Her motive has become herself. Her motive has become, Jesus is going to love my cooking, and he's going to tell me, Martha, you are the best cook in Israel. Never has they been a cook known since Eve as Martha of Bethany, something like that. That's what she wants, instead of wanting to feed her Lord, or wanting to feed her sister, or wanting to feed the apostles, and of love for them. And that's the distraction, because that's, but the very fact that she gets so flustered in doing the cooking is clearly a sign. She had not really doing it, in this case, she's a great saint now, but she wasn't doing it then for the love of God, for the love of the apostles and so on. She was self-seeking. So that's a distraction. She's distracted by it, and we know, especially in the work, we know that we do, we work, but our work should be a means of contemplation, we're turning it into prayer, because we're directing towards you Lord, directing towards the service of whoever I'm working for, whatever it might be. So that's an early example, I suppose, of curiosity, in a sense. Now the one that we all have, and I mean, it's such a big thing, as well as in everybody's life, is the little attention magnet that we have in our pockets, that is designed, it's a very powerful magnet. You get a really powerful magnet, and it just every little scrap of metal anywhere near it, goes flies and sticks to it. And the foam is like that, and it's designed to be that, it's amazingly clever reading. And instead of metal, drawn to it, what it draws to it, essentially actually is our heart. It's a heart magnet, it draws my eyes, and wherever my eyes go, my heart, like Mary's little Mary's sheep, wherever the eyes go, the heart is sure to follow. And so, we're a little attention magnet, which we recurve with that, because it is so designed, look at this, look at that, and our heart is going there, our attention is going there. We're giving it whenever most precious, and not just one of our, one of the world's most precious commodities, and that is attention. It's super valuable, when and the designers of the phone, that's what they need. We have to gather up all these little scraps of attention, like a magnet gathers up all these little scraps of metal, because this metal is gold. And we want to collect up all these bits of gold. And what we're, what unfortunately, all of us are in this trap, you know, our attention magnet, and it just gathers up all the gold, little bits, little small bits, little bit of gold, fine, small bit of gold, it's worth a lot of money. And it gathers up all the small bits of our attention. And look at it again. Are looking for a long time. Things that are really redirecting my attention. Again, this, like, I suppose some people just watch their phone, as they're brushing their teeth. But it's stealing my attention. And that does have a fax on us. There's somebody has this line, which is an interesting line. A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, a wealth of information, and, you know, in our phone, we've an almost infinite source of information. Which is very interesting. You know, it's a funny thing. You know, the videos on YouTube are really interesting. The shorts are maybe kind of grabbing Instagram shorts. They're very funny. You know, they really are. And some of them are really interesting. And the one that's really informative, I never knew that about spiders, you know? And there's an infinite number of things. But really, you know, do we have the time to find out, try to find out this infinite number of interesting or funny things? And therefore, end up in a poverty of attention. It was all my attention. My little gold nuggets have been stolen by my phone. And therefore, as attention is only, we've only limited amount of attention. Therefore, it's not directed towards the things that really matter. We lose what they call famously focus. And that's another virtue. That's the virtue, contrary to curiosity, and as they virtue and Latin, which they call "studiosity" which I think the best translation now would be focus. And the traditional definition of that is, "studioseness, studiosity does, or focus" is the virtue that moderates the appetite for knowledge. Interesting. It moderates. It moderates a bit like a traffic control. Moderates, you know? You go this way, you go that way, and you stop there. It moderates. Moderators are kind of controller, who's not just less. It's controlling the flow of knowledge. And so, this virtue of focus moderates the appetite for knowledge. I see this is really interesting, a little video about little spiders, or how birds make their nests, or what's happening in the other side of the world. But the virtue of focus says, "Okay, I'm sure it's really interesting, but it's not for me, not now." This is not the moment. This is the moment for focusing on my work, for focusing on my prayer, for focusing on thinking about the others, whatever it might be. And so, it's a very important one. Focus does require, like all the virtues, it does require I sing no door sounds. I am, you know? I don't know, it's just very interesting. You see something saying, "Wow, it's really interesting." Okay, but it's irrelevant. And those two things can be very different. Something is interesting, and something relevant, relevant for me. Our father made two interesting resolutions in a retreat. And they are, "I mustn't ever look." And the second one, well first of all, I mustn't ever look, meaning that our father was going to mortify his sight a lot. Now, obviously everything he did, what is mortification extraordinary? And he did say to people of the work, "You don't have to imitate me, or don't imitate me, in the mortification center." Because our father did very extraordinary mortifications. One of the ones that I find kind of unthinkable almost, are father driving through the Alps, they're driving to Austria, Germany, and they're driving over the Alps. And a father doesn't look at the window. I would explode if I couldn't look at the window. And that's not the say, our father doesn't say, "Oh, you should never look at the window, and take in the scenery." No, maybe you should take it all in and love it, and have it as a positive distraction, as in a distraction towards God, giving thanks to God for these things. But anyway, he chose that as a mortification. And he, really, obviously had this great, great appreciation of, we need to mortify our curiosity. And the second one, I mustn't ask questions simply out of curiosity. And that's kind of interesting, because you're going to, you win my thing, I'm not a curious person. But then you hear, you know, somebody says, "I don't know, you know, something like, somebody had an accident, they're not as well." And okay, that's all you need to know, but then you kind of wonder, what was the accident, you know? And you're going to realize that, asking, "You kind of, in a little subtle kind of way, you want to find out, what was the accident?" "Oh, who cares?" You know, they care, and do, but you can realize that's not for me to know. And the only reason I'm trying to find out, I dress it up as the concern and tell me more, and I'll pray about that, and will you ensure it, and where they insure it, and is anybody going to prison? You know, that kind of thing. And that's just sheer curiosity. And so, our father's resolution, I mustn't ask questions simply out of curiosity, is kind of very interesting. Can you get anything in the new reading I've got? The only reason I'm going to, the question I was going to ask, the only reason I'm kind of thinking that, in those terms, is that a sheer curiosity. Anyway, so all these things are related to brosse arti. Where is my thoughts? Where are my heart? What am I habitually going to think about? Because that is being recollected, where habitually our thoughts are going to the things that are really worth going to. You Lord, think about my sisters, think about family, where are they? What are they up to? They're good thoughts. Think about you Lord. These are really worthwhile. And then, that requires though focus, that we're not dispersed all over the place. Think about our lady. Our lady, we have, saying Luke gives us, there's lovely two lovely examples of our lady, our lady's heart, so focused in Bethlehem. And then again, in Jerusalem, when our Lord is lost and found at the temple, both times our lady focuses at different descriptions, each time she ponders these things in her heart. But in other words, focus. She's focused. Her heart, her treasure is so clear. You Lord are her treasure. That's where our heart is. And also it's in Joseph, because she says, look at your father. Look at where we've been, your father and I, look at where we're, and she's thinking about, saying Joseph as well. It's very interesting. Anyway, let's ask our lady to help us, to help us to have this, that tendency, that we also attend towards our treasure, that we share the same treasure, your son, and our brothers and sisters. - I give you thanks, my God, for the good resolutions, affections and inspirations. You have communicated to me in this meditation. I ask you for help to put them into effect. My mother, my aunt, saying Joseph, my father, Lord, my guardian angel, intercede to me.