A Book of Sparks

I believe that watchfulness, as the hallmark of being a disciple, is ripe for reintroducing to the mainstream. (Location 344)

we are bigger than our thoughts and feelings; they are discrete events in our minds. We can observe our thoughts and feelings and decentre from them. (Location 378)

Mindfulness is not about avoiding difficult reality, but about facing it head on. (Location 388)

Another way of trying to describe what happens when we become more aware and attentive is to describe it as moving from doing to being. (Location 424)

Part of the self-regulation of attention is the ability to switch our attention. (Location 463)

Mindfulness within the Christian perspective is about not forgetting the things of God but remembering them. (Location 522)

mimneske – to be mindful of, to actively remember. There is a high level of personal involvement in the remembering – that is mindfulness, the involvement of our awareness and attention. (Location 526)

mnemoneute – to be mindful of, to enduringly remember. (Location 537)

mindfulness can be used in different settings because it is a universal human capacity for awareness and attention in the present moment (Location 539)

The central vows of a Benedictine way of life seem to me to be at the heart of what it means to live out the gospel in the kingdom of God, through prayer and community. (Location 553)

The first vow is one of stability, and at the heart of this is the gospel idea of persevering. (Location 556)

staying with one community and one place, (Location 558)

we stop looking to other places or other people, or to a future time where we imagine the grass might be greener. We have to focus on the present moment, where we are now, which is a central idea of mindfulness – living in present-moment awareness. (Location 559)

second key piece of scaffolding is the vow of conversatio morum, often translated as ‘conversion of life’. (Location 563)

fidelity to the monastic way of life. (Location 564)

this vow is about fixing all my love, attention and awareness on Christ and mindfully following in His footsteps. I see it as fidelity to a mindfully Christian way of life. (Location 568)

the last vow – that of listening obedience. (Location 571)

the good soil in the parable of the sower in Mark 4:1–9 is the attentive listener. (Location 572)

A key part of Christian mindfulness is to listen attentively to the Word of God and to the living Word, Christ Himself. What emerges in this is a new mind, the Greek word metanoiete, which is sometimes translated ‘repentance’ (Mark 1:15). We are to leave behind our old habitual ways of thinking that are shaped in the patterns of this world, and allow the strange newness of the kingdom to emerge. (Location 572)

What emerges is not habitual, rule-bound patterns of thought and behaviour but an inner freedom that swims in the dynamic love of God for the world and its peoples. (Location 575)

discovering our embodiment. (Location 583)

second movement is how we cultivate our capacity to observe. (Location 585)

third movement is ‘towards acceptance.’ (Location 587)

final movement is that involving a growth in compassion, towards the self and to others. (Location 589)

B – stands for the body, and reclaiming our body through our mindful awareness practices. ·      O – stands for our ability to observe our thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, moving out of living on autopilot. ·      A – I use ‘A’ for awareness, and our ability to focus our attention as well as open up our awareness to all of the reality we experience. I have moved the important idea of acceptance as part of the move towards compassion. ·      C – stands for the movement towards compassion, towards our own self, others, the world and God. In this compassionate attitude we accept the full reality of our internal thoughts, feelings and sensations non-judgementally. (Location 594)