The Good Work of Paying Attention

 Recently I was asked to speak at the national conference for the Association for Christians in Student Development (ACSD). The organizers asked me to give a theological account for the work of student development and to show how the themes of the conference connected to the good work of student life. Here is the second  installment of the six talks I gave on June 10-13. 

Session Two: The Good Work of Paying Attention

 

Lectio Divina: John 17.24-26: hear this as God’s word to you as we listen in on the motive of Jesus’ work that he has been sent to accomplish.

 All of our work is to be oriented around the good work of another—Jesus Christ—who is at the right hand of the Father, where he continues the work he was sent to accomplish by empowering us through the Spirit to join him in what he is up to in the world.

 Yesterday, I gave you three snapshots in the NT, which point us to this foundational calling (the overarching narrative of the Gospels-Acts; Eph 2.4-10; and 2 Cor 5.17-20).  These three snapshots remind us that the Christian life is more than just knowing certain propositions and principles and then applying them to our lives (not that it is less than that!). Instead, God invites us to much more. He gathers us to himself and his people that we might work with him to reconcile the world to himself in and through his Son, Jesus Christ, in whom all things find their purpose. And when we contemplate this reality that we are now a part of, when we embrace this calling—when this becomes our foundational mode of being and going about our work, it changes the way we do everything; it also means then we can endure what is sometimes very challenging work, because our labor is not in vain.

But if we are going to go about our good work in this way—by orienting our work to the ongoing work of Jesus Christ, this means that we must be people who can pay attention—to what God is up to in us, through us, before us, and around us. In other words, attentiveness is foundational to our work; being able to hear and faithfully respond to what God is doing in us, and through us, and before us, and around us becomes our primary task. What a challenge this is in our age of constant and unrelenting distraction! Today in our keynote address with Dr Doreen Dodgen-Magee and the workshops throughout this week, we are going to learn some important skills for how to be more attentive, more present, more attuned to our embodied selves—and how to help our students do so as well.

 In our way of doing life these days we suffer from a collective ADHD, which debilitates our ability to do the very thing that brings us quality of life and enables us to join in God’s work in the world: paying attention—to ourselves, to God, and to what God is doing in, through, around us, and before us. It is one thing to know that we are invited to join in the ongoing work of Jesus Christ as he reconciles all things. It is quite another to actually join the party, to develop the skills of attentiveness that enable us to know what he is up to in our midst. Your foundational work as Christians involved in student development is to help your students be attentive to God.

 Pastor and theologian Eugene Peterson talks about three acts of attentiveness that make up the work of joining the ongoing work of Jesus Christ: prayer, Scripture reading, and spiritual direction: “prayer is an act in which I bring myself to attention before God; reading Scripture is an act of attending to God in his speech and action across two millennia in Israel and Christ. Spiritual direction is an act of giving attention to what God is doing in the person who happens to be before me at any given moment. Always it is God to whom we are paying, or trying to pay attention. The contexts, though, vary: in prayer the context is myself; in Scripture it is the community of faith in history; in spiritual direction it is the person before me. God is the one to whom we are being primarily attentive in these contexts, but it is never God-in-himself; rather, it is God-in-relationship—with me, with his people, with this person.”

Peterson calls this practice of paying attention “working the angles”. He draws on the metaphor of trigonometry to explain what he means. And since this is coming to you from LETU, I  have drawn on this mathematical imagery to help us think about the work of student development. Here’s how it works:

Let’s imagine that the work of student development forms a triangle with three parts. Most of what people see in the daily activities of student development are what we see in the lines of the triangle. The lines come in various proportions to each other but what determines the proportions, and the shape of the whole are the angles, which are essential to forming the triangle. The visible lines of student development are student engagement (or programming), student care and conduct, and administration. But the angles of this work are prayer, Scripture engagement, and spiritual direction. The length and proportions of the lines are variable, fitting numerous circumstances and accommodating a wide range of gifts and work responsibilities. If, though, the lines are disconnected from the angles, they no longer make a triangle. Student development work disconnected from the angle actions—the acts of attention to God in relation to myself and to others—deforms the triangle, meaning that the our work is no longer given its shape by God. “Working the angles” is what gives shape and integrity to the daily work of student development. “Working the angles” is quiet work. It is work that you do when no one is watching. And no one knows if you really doing this work or not. And it’s hard work. But it is essential to the calling of student development. Let me explain why.

This year, approximately 20 million students are attending a university or college in the United States. The demographics of this batch of college students is as diverse as has ever been in this country. And yet, even though these 20 million students bring with them as many different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences, they nevertheless all share one thing in common: they all come to college to find their place in this world. This quest to find one’s place in the world comes in the form of a number of different questions (sometimes subconsciously) that students ask as they step onto the campus: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the point of life? Is there a point to life? Do I belong? Where do I belong here? What am I going to do for a living? Who will I marry? (Will I ever marry?) Who will my friends be? (Will I make any friends?)

 

This is part of what makes working at a university so exciting. We get to intersect with students at this foundational point of their journey as their quest to discover meaning and a sense of belonging intensifies. We get to invest in people who are just beginning to discover their intellectual, social, and spiritual potential. But it is also what makes working at a university so challenging.

 

What is often frustrating about engaging with college students is that by the time most of them get to us they have already been conditioned to think that what they are studying at university is fragmented, disconnected, and ultimately unrelated to everyday life: English has nothing to do with civic engagement, which has nothing to do with economics or biology. And all of these courses have nothing to do with the real world, the lives that they live every day in the dorms and on the field or court; their education, they have often been made to believe,  has nothing to do with the way they live their social lives in their communities. Most have already been formed to assume that the true value of an academic subject or a particular major is determined by whether it can contribute to getting a well-paying job; a university education is necessary hoop to jump through in order to join the right circles of people.

 

And they come to us bearing a burden unlike any other generation before them: they come not only searching for meaning in life (as all generations have), but they come being told that they have to make that meaning for themselves. Frankly, this makes the quest nearly impossible for most students, because they have been conditioned to believe that there is no coherence in our world, that our intellectual, social, and spiritual lives are unrelated and in fact compete against each other. In short, they have learned that we as a society don’t really know what the point of life is, or what we should be doing with our lives, or why we are doing what we are doing with our lives. And so, in order to survive, they have learned to compartmentalize.

 

And yet, as challenging as these realities are, this is what makes working with college students so exciting. God in Christ is reconciling all things! God is putting the pieces together, putting things in their rightful places! And we have been called to join him in this work! We get to help them make connections and find coherence between their academics, their social lives, their athletic competition, and their faith; we get to help them re-integrate their faith such that it informs and shapes all areas of their lives—but we can only do this when we pay attention to the ongoing work of Christ in us, through us, before us, and around us, when we work the angles.

 

This leads us to our passage in John 17 and what Jesus was praying just before he offered his life to the Father as an atoning sacrifice that we might share in God’s life: “Father, I desire that they…may see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” What is it that Jesus wants for us? To see the glory that has been given to him. What is the glory that has been given to Jesus? Behind the little word in John 17.24 translated “because” in English is what is called in Greek an epexegetical hoti; it explains what Jesus means by the term “glory”. It explains that the glory given to Jesus is the love he has received from the Father from eternity. And this is what Jesus has been sent to deliver to us; this is Jesus’ good work, that which he continues to accomplish in and through us.  He explains in John 17.26 that he has made know to them this love, and will continue to make it known, “so that (purpose) the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

 What is the ongoing work of Jesus in our world? What is it that Jesus is up to in the world? What is it that Jesus wills for us? Love and delight! To know the love that he knows; to share in the love that He has enjoyed from eternity! This is what we are all seeking; and it is what we find when we pay attention to what God is up to in the world.

So, our good work begins and ends with receiving God’s love. This is the work that Jesus is ultimately up to in the world. All of our acts of paying attention, and all of our lines of work find their root in this aim of Jesus—that we might know the love that he shares with the Father by the Spirit.

 Discussion/Reflection Questions:

1.      How can the work of student development distract you from being attentive to the work of God in, through, before, and around you?

2.      What are the ways in which the three “lines” of student development (student engagement, student care and conduct, and administration) can be done without “working the angles” (i.e. without paying attention to God’s work)?

3.      What are some practical ways that you can be more attentive to the work of God in, through, before, and around you?

4.      What do you sense God saying to you so far as you participate in this conference?

 

Father, we live in a distracted, distracting, fragmented world that draws our attention away from you and the work that you are doing in and through us in Jesus Christ. Enable us to be attentive and responsive to your word and what you are up to in this world. Enable us to receive the love which you have for us in Jesus Christ, and to help our students encounter that love in the midst of their quest to find their place in this world. In Jesus’ name.  Amen.