I find that as I get older (which is every minute of the day) I discover that my attention span is getting shorter and shorter. I’m not sure if this has to do with age, loss of grey matter or greater attention to the details of life. I find myself taking longer and more circuitous mental routes when I read a book, article or blog. It seems to take FOREVER to finish a page, let alone a chapter. I find myself being inextricably being drawn to the minute and parsed, the “turn of phrase”, the “Oh, that was a marvelous/interesting/brilliant way to get your point across” phraseology. Yet I don’t really feel robbed of time. I feel like I have been given a gift, the opportunity to really chew up that piece of mental steak, the ability to wring the last precious drop of mental fluidity from someone else’s vast storehouse of useful and useless information.
Bits such as:
“They caught my eyes...the trees bedecked in white blossoms. They were lovely, lacey like a cotillion frock.”
Or
“I love that the trees cling to their frocks of cranberry, plum, fire, and tangerine days and weeks and months on end.”
I wonder why that is?
I feel like the guy sitting on the couch in the Snickers commercial wondering where all his hunger goes after he takes a bite of a Snickers bar. (It ends up somewhere in Germany.)
“DeHungerize!”
Maybe I have just needed to take smaller bites of the intellectual/ spiritual/ mature perspectives of others. I mean, isn’t that what we told our children to do when their cheeks were puffed out, distended to the utmost in an attempt to cram in every last morsel of delectable goodness?
Here are a couple of bits of what I mean:
“There is only one thing worse than blindness . . . having sight and no vision.”
Or
“I often feel I'm waiting on God to do something; answered prayer, doors of opportunity, spiritual breakthrough. Am I waiting on Him or is He waiting on me?”
I have so much to learn and digest and so little time! My mind seems like a sponge, sucking up every drop of life giving moisture, yet it doesn’t seem to make it into the instant recall bin. “Why can’t I remember what the guy or gal said? That was perfect!” I so long to be able to string all the amazing phrases together and sound absolutely brilliant and intelligent and look like the wizened traveler on the road of pilgrimage.
Pride? Maybe that why I can’t always remember them because I have enough problems with pride without others piling it on. I already have a too-inflated opinion of me.
Maybe it’s because it’s not necessarily for others? Maybe it is just for me, a gift from the Almighty Trinity, just for me, just for journey towards Salvation.
I really loved the Sci/Fi book series, “Dune.” Rich, textured and deep, this tome deals with so many levels of society: religion, politics, relationships, morality, ethics, ect. In the dry and arid desert world, the most precious commodity is water. One or two mouthfuls would sell for a great amount. It was traded above and below the marketplace, as legal and illegal tender. It was precious, not a thing to be wasted or squandered. The indigenous people even wore “stillsuits”, a portable moisture reclamation system they had on continually.
Precious and life giving was that moisture. They squandered not a drop, not one scintilla of it. It could be the difference between life and death.
I am finding my journey into Orthodoxy life giving and sustaining, vital and necessary, un-looked for and the end of my search. And it is coming to me in bits and pieces. Chunks to be chewed up, and every vital nutrient extracted.
All for my good and for my journey towards Salvation.
I feel more prepared for this journey. Thanks to my fellow writers and podcasters, my pilgrimage will be the richer and I will be a little better equipped. Step by step, line upon line, precept upon precept.
Taking increasingly smaller bites and chewing longer!
Traveler
