Paying Attention

One evening a week or two ago, I was talking with my daughter in Australia.  She was in the middle of her workday, the time difference between Massachusetts and Melbourne then being fifteen hours. Mimi works in the external relations department of an Australian university business school and, as such, her portfolio includes setting up conferences, contacting visiting professors, arranging the details of events, researching the content of papers and presentations of said visiting professors, keeping her boss apprised of all these developments and no doubt other random tasks that fall across her desk every day.  Sitting in front of her computer while we were talking, she knew at any moment that an email could show up or a colleague stop by with a request.  Such is her work life.

As a single mother, her home life whirls around two teenagers and a very large yellow labrador retriever.  Weekends are filled with basketball, footie and soccer; laundry, shopping and a myriad of other household tasks.  After her hour-plus commute home, most weeknights consist of homework help, catching up on mail and cooking for fourteen and sixteen year-old appetites. Exactly like so many working parent households with school age children.

When I look back on those days in my own life, it’s hard to fathom how in the world I managed it.  Did we ever find time to shower?

At some point in our conversation, my daughter lamented, “I feel like I’m always trying to catch up here. So many times when I’m on a roll with a project, someone will stop by my desk needing something or I’ll get a phone call or both. I am constantly interrupted.”

Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Catholic priest and theologian, wrote of a time he visited Notre Dame University where he had taught previously.* “While visiting,” he reflected, “I met an older, experienced professor who had spent most of his life there.  And while we strolled over the beautiful campus, he said, with a certain melancholy in his voice, ‘You know, my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.’” I love that thought and wish that I could follow its wisdom more often.

My model for a full and useful life is the young Jewish rabbi from Nazareth. If Jesus had any agenda, it was simply to do God’s work among the people where he lived. And more times than not, that work occurred when he was interrupted.

A few examples: On the way to heal a sick child, a woman grabbed the edge of Jesus’ robe and pleaded with him to heal her illness. If he stopped for her, it was possible that he would fail to reach the sick child’s bedside in time. It would interrupt his day. Yet he did stop, taking time to speak with her, assuring her that faith had made her well. It changed her life.

Another time, after Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been killed, he sought a quiet place across a lake so he could be alone. But crowds of seekers, hearing this, ran around by land and were there when he came ashore. Poor man couldn’t catch a break! Nonetheless he “had compassion on them and healed their sick.” (Mt. 13ff.) And then proceeded to invite them all to dinner, five thousand of them and, lest we forget, “besides women and children.”

Bartimaeus, a blind man, was sitting by the side of a road when he heard that Jesus was coming by.  He called out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.” Jesus was surrounded by a large crowd, probably teaching them as they walked. His friends told Bartimaeus to be quiet. However, Bartimaeus was determined not to let Jesus pass him by. He called out even more loudly. Jesus heard him and called him to come forward, no doubt to the dismay of his disciples, who it seems were often frustrated that Jesus would get sidetracked. Yet what a beautiful interruption this was: the gift of sight for a man blind since birth!

Jesus, like many wise teachers before him and since, was about paying attention to the moment, even as that moment might interfere with well-laid plans. It’s evident in what is arguably his most familiar parable, “The Good Samaritan”:  There was a man who was robbed and left for dead by the side of the road. Three people came down that road.  The first two kept going, perhaps because stopping to help would interfere with their plans. The third, a Samaritan, a foreigner and the least likely to stop, nonetheless did. He put the man on his own donkey, took him to a safe place and gave the innkeeper his own money for the man’s needs, until he could come back. I wonder, did he come back? When the man was well, did the Samaritan take him to his own house? Did they form a friendship? The parable doesn’t say, yet it is certainly possible that an unexpected interruption to the Samaritan’s day might have changed the trajectory of his life.

That’s the thing. Interruptions can be considered a nuisance, which, granted, many times they are. And they can also change a person’s life, as it did for those whom Jesus stopped to help.

Can you think of a time when you were interrupted and discovered that it led you to an unexpected place, a new idea or a stranger who became a friend?  Or when someone interrupted their day and gave you just what you needed at the time?

“The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.”   (Frederick Buechner)

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*Reaching Out; The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, p. 36.