'Absolute attention is prayer.'

Simone Weil says, “Absolute attention is prayer.” And the more I have thought about this over the years, the truer it is for me. I have used the sentence often in talking about poetry to students, to suggest that if one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, snow, a cloud, something like revelation takes place. Something is “given,” and perhaps that something is always a reality outside the self. We are aware of God only when we cease to be aware of ourselves, not in the negative sense of denying the self, but in the sense of losing self in admiration and joy.

  And in a strange way laughter has the same effect. We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.

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from: May Sarton, 'Journal of a Solitude', 1973.

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