Distracted from Distraction – March Clergy Reflection
This Lent I have been trying to read more poetry. Over the last few months and years, I’ve noticed that my attention span is getting shorter and shorter.
I find it hard to sit and read for an hour without feeling the pull to get out a phone and scroll Instagram or watch a YouTube video, and I find in meetings or when I’m praying that my mind is so easily distracted.
In an attempt to combat this, I have been putting my phone down in another room and trying to read poetry because, by its nature poetry cannot be read quickly or in a utilitarian way. It must be read slowly, with full attention and ruminated on.
As most of us experience when giving up something for Lent, I have had limited success, but I want to reflect on one line from T. S. Eliot’s poem Burnt Norton from The Four Quartets. In it, T. S. Eliot contrasts the stillness of true presence with the restless distractions of modern life. He describes the experience of modern life as being:
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eliot critiques the way people are caught in a cycle of meaningless activity, constantly diverted from true awareness. He suggests that distraction leads to spiritual emptiness, preventing deeper reflection on time, existence, and the divine.
Perhaps, in this distracted world in which we live, it is fundamental in our Christian Walk to attend to the things we attend to. Let me encourage you in the final weeks of Lent, during Holy Week, and as we turn to celebrate the Resurrection: take time to focus on the Cross for an extended time without distraction.
To notice in the Cross and in the empty tomb, the beauty and the poetry of our salvation.
