What We Talk About When We Talk About God

or, "what we do with our attention"

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.” Mary Oliver

We often speak of God in generics, in grand gestures and far away perspectives. Eye in the Sky, Big Brother, Lord of Lords. As if He’s some floating orb up in the clouds, and only when we call on Him does He come wafting down to meet us eye-level, just for a moment, before retreating back into the comfort of His stratocumulus.

But what about right now? Where is God when the iron hands of the present moment constrict around our throats, demanding an answer?

I’ve found there’s one thing that consistently draws God close to me. Ironically, it’s the same thing that pushes Him away. My attention.

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It was Sunday morning and the pastor casually said something I’ll never forget. 

“The question is not, ‘Are you being formed?’” he said. “The question is, ‘What are you being formed by?’” This question isn’t just reserved for the spiritually devout. For centuries, philosophers and writers have pondered the same idea. Who are we becoming by the things we’re doing? 

Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “You become what you think about all day long.” 

Mary Oliver said: “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” 

Our awareness and attention are more than just currency. They’re our fate. Books like The Power of Habit and Atomic Habits made it common knowledge that our daily habits – even the micro ones, like snoozing your alarm or not immediately folding your clothes after taking them out of the dryer – form us into the people we become. You are what you repeatedly do. The scary thing that James Clear hit us over the head with is this: Most of us are slaves to our habits, and most of these habits are unintentional. We end up becoming slaves to things we don’t want to be slaves to (TikTok, alcohol, the praise of others). We end up worshiping things we don’t want to worship (money, power, social status).

I like to envision myself having an impact on the world. Rarely do I admit how much of an impact the world has on me. Our relationship with the world is bidirectional. Like rivers flooding the ocean, our environment feeds into our inner being. Without even noticing, we allow ourselves to be perpetually filled with the chaos and terror and negativity of the world – things we would never let in if we were just paying attention. 

For example:

I curl up with my fiancé for a wholesome movie night, where there’s inevitably a scene of two adults who get drunk and cheat on their partners. This is normal. I choose a hype, upbeat playlist at the gym, where rappers in my ear boast about beating their girlfriends. This is normal. I hop on social media and see footage of a serial killer in Toronto, a deadly fire in Hawaii,  a school shooting in New York, and a son on trial for killing his mother in Florida — all within mere moments of one another. I swallow all of this information alongside my Ollipop on my lunch break. This is normal. 

And I have the audacity to think these things aren’t forming me. 

Our attention is sacred. It’s an act of worship in itself. An act of spiritual, mental, and emotional formation. When you give something your attention – a movie, a conversation, a project at work – you’re declaring it the most important thing in your life. It may sound dramatic, but at its core, it’s true. When you pay attention to something, you’re wholeheartedly posturing yourself towards this thing. You’re dismissing ten billion options to say yes to one. You’re giving it value, power, control. You’re giving it you. 

In his book, This Is Water, David Foster Wallace writes: 

“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

If you worship money and things…then you will never have enough. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you….Worship power – you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart – you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.” 

The beautiful thing is that we get to choose what we do with our attention. We get to choose what we say, think, do, and consume. We get to choose what we worship.  Perhaps this is the very reason I choose to worship God, and why I give Him rapt awareness and attention to draw Him close. Because, as Wallace says, “anything else you worship will eat you alive.” 

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