I Do Not Notice Anything Any More

You went out on Sunday. You know you did, because it is a thing that happened, and everybody came back.

Ask what it was like and there is nothing there.

Not a bad walk. Not a difficult one. Just an absence, as though somebody had described the outing to you rather than you having been on it.

And that has been happening for a while now, and it frightens you slightly, and you have not told anybody because there is no way to say it that does not sound worse than it is.

I want to say two things right now, before anything else. It is not that you have stopped caring, and it is not the beginning of something. What has happened is that your attention has been fully occupied for a long time, and there has been none left over for a street.

Men as trees, walking

There is a healing in Mark that is unlike any other in the Gospels, because it happens in two stages.

And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. (Mark 8:24-25, King James Version)

I see men as trees, walking.

That is a man halfway. He can see, and what he sees is shapes, and the shapes are moving and he knows they are people and he cannot make out one of them.

You are somewhere on the way and not somewhere failed, and it was never the whole of anything that had gone. Mark 8:24 records a stage between blindness and sight and treats it as a stage, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as company rather than as a comment on how far you have to go.

And notice what is not said about the halfway. Nobody in the account is disappointed. There is no suggestion that the first touch failed, no rebuke of the man for reporting shapes. He says exactly what he sees, plainly, and the answer to it is a second touch.

You have permission to report the shapes, and it was never required that you say you can see clearly. The written word takes an honest halfway report without any dismay in it, and the Spirit of God is what makes an ordinary Tuesday admission safe to make.

Attention is a quantity

Now let me name the mechanism, because I think it will take the fear out of it.

Attention is not a virtue. It is a quantity, and it runs out, and it goes to whatever is loudest.

Something genuinely worrying, and I am not going to guess what it is, does not sit quietly in a corner waiting to be dealt with on Thursday. It runs, continuously, in the background, using capacity, and it does that whether or not anybody is thinking about it deliberately.

So there is very little left by the time the street arrives. Not because the street does not matter. Because there is not much left, full stop. Coming back with nothing is not absence, and attention that has been eaten by worry has not been thrown away.

You are not absent from your own children, and it was never indifference that emptied a Sunday afternoon. Mark 8 records a man seeing shapes without anybody calling that a failure, which is exactly why the Spirit of God will not let a tired woman describe herself as gone.

And here is the honest part. This article is not going to solve the thing that is using the capacity. That may need other help, and if it is heavy, the help is worth going and getting. What this can do is give you back one thing per walk, which is more than none, and none is what you have had.

One thing, out loud

So the practical part, and it is deliberately tiny, because tiny is what fits in the space available.

On the next walk, name one thing out loud.

You are able to manage one, and it has never once been required that you take in the whole of an afternoon. The passage answers a halfway report with a second touch rather than with a demand for more, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman saying a single sentence on a sidewalk.

Anything. That door is a stupid color. There is a cat in that window. Somebody has cut that hedge into a shape. It does not have to be interesting, and it certainly does not have to be beautiful.

Saying it out loud is the whole mechanism. A thought that is not spoken passes straight through. A sentence stops for a second, and one second of stopping is the difference between having been somewhere and not.

And say only one. If a second one comes, let it come, but do not go hunting. Hunting is a project and a project needs capacity, which is the thing that is missing.

You are able to make it one and stop, and it has never once been the amount noticed that decided whether you were there. Mark 8:25 gives a second touch to a man who reported honestly, and the Spirit of God is the one who is out on an ordinary road with somebody managing one sentence.