The Prayer of Close Attention

Walking around Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture last week, it was the circle that impressed itself on me once again.  One thing leads to another, which dissolves into another, and then another...  The grass is cultivated to feed the sheep, whose enclosures are moved each day to a new stand of grass.  The sheep are followed by the chickens who feed on the bugs attracted by the sheep manure.  I've forgotten now all the sequences, but eventually the pigs move in, and then more grass, and then the sheep, etc.  In the finishing barn, paper from the administrative offices is shredded and mixed with hay for bedding for the pigs.  The urine from the pigs jump-starts the breakdown of the paper, which is eventually transferred to the composting area, the heat from which is captured by water circulating through plastic tubes to heat the greenhouse in the winter.  Once the pigs are butchered, the bones are converted to biochar that is used in the restaurant for grilling the vegetables grown in the garden and fertilized by the compost. 

But maybe "circle" is not an adequate description.  Circles, after all, advance in one of only two directions, and what we observed was almost omni-directional.  Perhaps "web" is a better suited description.  All I know is that in this view of life miniaturized to a comprehensible view, everything fit together in a constant flow of inter-dependence that enabled each expression to simultaneously benefit from and contribute to another element of creation in a way that evoked the wonder and intrinsic value of each.  Operationalized was a kind of systemic graciousness that found ways for each element not only to flourish, but to shine.  Humility and glory no longer made opposites, but co-existent; each part honoring the "other" and the "next" without diminishing the "is." 

This, I left thinking, is the essence of abundance.  Why is it -- and when did it come to be -- that we became so afraid of scarcity that we grew jealous of any and every other; defensive and protective and stingy?  Why did it seem wise to atomize the fabric into discreet threads instead of celebrating their interwoven patterns?  And has the biochar of the divine spirit become so blackened and cold that nature's intrinsic and generous grace can no longer be heated into contributing use?

I  am too much of an optimist to believe that, but I pray that we begin to pay less mind to the faux-improvements we can impose on the world around us and more to the insights that world can teach us about all we have to share with one another. 


W.H. Auden once suggested that the essence of prayer is paying close attention.  Amen.