As I thought about our community closing out this year, I almost instinctively knew what was worth saying to us: Pay attention.
I could make it poetic and say that this is what the pandemic has taught me, but that would be disingenuous. The observing, this paying attention, this heightened awareness I am feeling so deeply drawn to seems more connected to the work I am doing with God and He with me than it does with any part of 2020.
My mom worries about how much I think about my parents dying. She worries about dying, not for herself but for me. She thinks that in their deaths I might fall into pieces, never to be put back together, and maybe that’s true. I do think about my parents dying a lot.
But more than worry or fear, I think my 32-year-old self is aware, sometimes painfully aware, that I wish I had paid more attention a decade ago, a decade in which I lost my two closest grandparents.
I in no way blame 22-year-old Holly for not understanding, for not seeing what she might be missing during brief visits to the nursing home, rushing back to friends and campus activities. How hard it must be to pay attention when you are just trying to figure out how to sign apartment leases and make it through rocky romances.
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I’m coming to believe that paying attention is less about the number of minutes and more about our presence in those minutes.
I vividly remember my grandma’s baby-soft, paper-thin skin, the delicate touch I held her hands with in those later years. I remember her laugh and her bright smile, the kind that shows up not just in pink lips but in the eyes. I remember sitting at dinner with her in the cafeteria, my chair pulled up beside her wheelchair and her telling me she was ready to go, the gentlest pressing of her head to mine, the whisper in her words, the tears we both held back as we pulled our heads apart and looked in each other’s eyes.
Grandma raised us hand-in-hand with my parents, so there is no fear I will lose her in my memories. But I do wonder what else I would remember if I had known to pay attention in my early adult years, her last years.
And so I am paying attention to my parents dying, not because it is expected anytime soon but because I want to store up as many long held hugs, as many heated policy discussions, as much laughter and as many mundane Saturdays as I can. I find myself sitting in my great-aunt's forest green rocking chair—another person I wish my adult self could have soaked in more—and I close my eyes and listen to my mom sing Christmas carols from the other room. I want to remember this. I smile at my dad dozing off in his recliner, completely content with his family around him. I want to remember this.
Last night I turned off the TV just to listen to my dog Jack breathing as he slept. His warm body curled up to my right hip, overcome with the goodness of this creature laying beside me. Content, safe, secure, just as I want him to always be. Pay attention. Pay attention. Pay attention.
We have fought this year to pay attention to the other end of this spectrum, urging ourselves to not become numb to the horrific collective suffering of 2020. Trying to make sense of people, of death and grief, of the never-ending violence against Black bodies and of the drastically unequal agony the pandemic and economic crisis have brought. And we have seen how our unwillingness to pay attention has only multiplied the suffering. We have screamed, “Pay attention!” to people not paying attention.
But I wonder if in it all we have missed whispering to ourselves, “Pay attention.”
In the middle of involuntary, never-ending home-schooling, in the middle of the grief of cancelled plan after cancelled plan, in the middle of our anger at others’ irresponsibility, have we ourselves paid attention? There is no shame if we haven’t, just like there’s no shame on 22-year-old Holly for being self-absorbed and missing so many last moments with my grandparents.
Pay attention. Pay attention. Pay attention.
In the middle of it all have we heard our children singing? Have we closed our eyes and touched, really felt the fabric of our favorite sweater or blanket between our fingers? Have we gazed out the window at the rain, the falling leaves, the sun and the shadows it makes? Have we been silent and looked for just a minute at the magic that is a burning candlewick?
In the middle of it all, have we read the stories of and gazed upon the faces of just a few of our fellow humans lost to this virus? Have we held intentional moments of vigil and prayer for the unhoused and the hungry? Have we heard the cry of the needy and responded, not out of guilt of our abundance, but out of a place of solidarity, a place of paying attention? Have we recognized the pain in our own bodies holding space for that pain? Have we given to our fragile selves the healing power of self-presence?
This is my wish, my hope for you this Christmas season, that you would make moments to pay attention. To hold the grief of another. To take in the magic of a Christmas tree. To listen to a favorite album, not in the background of hurried projects but with a quiet cup of tea. To remember the times you were present in the past and to hold them as close as the comfort of a long-awaited hug. Pay attention, dear ones. To the common beauty and the life-changing pain. And may you know that God is paying attention too, present in it all. Immanuel.
Merry Christmas!
-Holly & The Rise Team
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