I used to think that meditation was a practice for very patient, holy, nice people. 

I thought it was "hard" and quite serious and perhaps to be practiced only by men in caves or monks in monasteries. 

Certainly not for me. Or at least not something I'd be "good" at. 

And then one day, I read these words, borrowed again, this time from Mary Oliver in her poem "The Summer Day" — 

"I don't know exactly what a prayer is. 

I do know how to pay attention..."

Ahh yes, how to pay attention. 

How to pay attention. 

Attention. 

I'd also read Oliver write elsewhere that "Attention is the beginning of devotion." 

Devotion. 

Then, many years later, when my son was born, I saw these words embodied.

I watched Lou watch the world with his "enormous and complicated eyes." Curious and present. Simply taking everything in. Attentive. Effortlessly devotional. 

I, like most parents, of course think that my child is special. 

But, like most parents, of course, I also know he's just like each one of us. 

I suspect we all came in like this, practicing presence as our natural way of simply being here. 

Somewhere along the way to where we are now, most of us trade the present tense for the past ("If only it had been different... I can't believe I said that... How could we have known?") or the future ("what happens next... will there be enough... when will this end?"). 

Notice, right now, how this natural pandemic pause in "normal" life offers itself as an invitation to pay attention. 

Today, can you catch yourself in a moment - any moment - even this one - to look up and around and pay attention? 

What do you notice?

Colors? scents? sounds? textures? tastes? (your senses are a natural way in). 

Who are you with? Where are you? How does this moment feel? In your body? In your mind? In your heart? 

What's your breath like? This breath. This breath you are breathing right now?

Yesterday, we used the sense of sight to practice paying attention.

Today we use the sense of sound, listening, hearing, to practice paying attention. I love this practice. It’s a dear one I used to practice myself during sleepless early nights when my son was first born. I hope you enjoy its simplicity too.

We all know how to pay attention. 

Any time we remember how to. That, that is mediation. 

"Attention is the beginning of devotion."

Devotion to what? 

For one possible answer, I'll leave you the rest of Oliver's poem "The Summer Day,” below. Today’s meditation embodies the question too.

LEAVE A COMMENT: What’s something you noticed today - how did you pay attention?  

till tomorrow,

Cath 

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver