The Art of Noticing

During this season of reorienting around a new vision for Evergreen, we will deep dive into some of the 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversation to help spark new ideas for how we might move forward in our contexts. I (Elise P) will open our series with the first of the 9: Noticing.

For much of my life, noticing was a vehicle for moral superiority. One noticed bad or unsavory things and stored them up as reasons not to talk to the neighbors, or go back to that church, or make friends at the band concert. Noticing good things took more practice and sometimes felt frivolous. Having noticed that it was a nice day, or that I was feeling particularly happy in a given moment, I was never sure where to go next. As it turned out, the noticing itself was all that was required. The act of noticing slipped a bookmark into my memory and, over time, built a cache of reasons that my life was good and worth living; examples of people who were kind and worth trusting; and evidence that it was safe to hope for the best rather than always assuming the worst.

This past month, I asked the Holy Spirit to help me notice my neighbors accurately and kindly, counterbalancing my natural attention (flaws, problems, slights) with my learned attention (gifts, opportunities, natural goodness) along the way. The result was a lot of new bookmarks in my story of my neighborhood.

Each of my neighbors has like 10 things going on in their lives that, were they going on in mine (and when they have been), would constitute a prayer request: Great-grandbabies in the NICU, kids going off to college, surgeries on the calendar. This month, I began to feel my attention particularly called to the fact that each of my neighbors also has qualities or things going on that I admire or would celebrate in prayer: Great relationships with their grown-up kids, new job opportunities, a gift for making everyone in the neighborhood feel like an old friend. I also have neighbors I know nothing about but wish I did. I notice that they’re not out and about as much, that they’re busy with little kids, that they’re managing a less-than-friendly dog on their walks; all things that happen to me too and that I always hope those around me will understand and be gracious about.

Just in the noticing, I find myself with a cache of complex pictures of my neighbors; reasons why they’re celebrating and grieving; the things that make them happy and anxious; some ways in which they are struggling and thriving. I don’t know if all of them are Christian. I know for certain that some of them are not. And still, all these bookmarks in my memory help me to think of my neighbors as the complex, dignified image-bearers of God that they are, regardless of how close they are to Jesus right now. For me, this is an important readjustment to my imagination; a work of healing lots of years and phases in the making. I feel excited about all the things I didn’t quite realize I knew about my neighbors, and about how much Jesus has quietly repaired and set right over time in my own brain.

Whatever degree of rehabbing your noticing needs, I hope that little spurts of intentional noticing (good and bad) give you lots of great bookmarks to come back to when the moment for a good conversation or an opportunity to love someone arises.