When I was studying pastoral care at Columbia Seminary, the instructor assured all of us fledgling ministers that dying people want to be remembered more than anything else, and not in a grand, universal way but in an up-close, person-to-person way. Shortly after, while I was a chaplain at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Decatur, I told a dying person that his family and friends – and even I – would remember him always. He cried and cried, telling me I was one of the good ones (the good ones being his family and friends and their attention).
I attended to his needs, my supervisor told me, challenging me not to be proved a liar. I remember him right now – Vietnam veteran, incurable staph, no memory of combat but combat veteran – so I guess I was truthful. Though he fought on an international stage, when his dying time came the attention he needed most was local and personal - I just happened to pass through his life at its very end, and was fortunate to be invited to share it. To attend: civilly or courteously caring for another person. Respectfully sitting in an audience, “attend” recalls most polite aspects of our culture, and politeness is the eternal root of politics.
You and I share a basic need for attention, of being noticed sympathetically or memorably. I am blogging right now, partly because I crave your attention. This morning, I researched Phyllis W. Schneck – 79 year old shooting victim in Tuscon, life-long Presbyterian, mother of three, widowed for three years, knitter and volunteer – so that I could post a memorial to her and not to a federal judge or nine year old girl, though they need our memories as much as Mrs. Schneck. Though I do want us to remember those not famous as well as those who are (famous being a function of attention, and we do lavish attention on those who are judges and politicians more than we do on those who are retired widows), I also wanted your attention, your noticing that I was sharp enough to post from a different, perhaps even unique angle on yesterday’s tragic event.
To get attention among so many people, to have even a tiny fraction of the world’s eyes turned to us, has always required notability, either great beneficence or great malevolence. Both hold their own distinctions. One who accomplishes something of great benefit attends to others' needs and wants, who in turn give attention (accolades, honors) to the accomplisher. Call this reciprocity, civil reciprocity. We attend concerts, recitals, speeches, performances with respect and attention because we’re being served and so should be appreciative, polite, politic. And those we honor do well to drop the head and lower the eye and give us the “aw shucks” of humility. And I’m not arguing that benefactors serve solely for the accolades, just that the accolades are always a part of beneficence.
The other, malevolence, holds a great irony. A drive for attention seems also to be an inseparable part of great (and lesser) malevolence: a lunatic kills six people in Arizona from motives we know not what, but in public, in broad daylight, attention must be a factor. Our eyes are riveted, pulled to the scene, he gets our attention even though his act holds nothing of civility, or courtesy, or even politics (to our current knowledge). Sadly, such malevolent acts are not the sole attractors for our attention: even speaking malevolently can draw our eyes and ears more quickly than speaking benevolently. Praising someone gets little noticed, deriding someone gets instant airplay. Deep in us, all of us, lies a greater propensity to notice danger than succor, to attend to the warnings more than the assurances, to mark the enemies more easily than the friends.
And that’s one hulking challenge of our times: we have so much info, so much media, so much data that for one to get another’s attention - globally, mind you, not locally - consistently leads to an escalating criticism, an escalating disparaging of the two’s adversary. So politics – ironically, sadly ironically the practice of living together – becomes wildly divisive, media becoming fascinated with this “vitriol,” and you and I can’t tear our eyes away from such a malevolent display. And it's a slippery slope, pot to heroin, once we get used to a certain noise level the only way a voice can stand out from the cacophony is to get louder, so it’s pedal to the medal, accelerate manfully, shoot ‘em up cowboys, cat-fights galore, “liberal” and “conservative” and “traitor” and “liar” and “they should be executed” and look at me, at me!
I am just like that, sadly. I want you to notice me, to pay attention to me. Oh, I’m not so desperate that I’m going to go out and murder people, perform some atrocity. But I do know that many of my efforts, even posting this post to this blog, stem from that deep, human need for attention. You’re this way, too, we humans all are this way. And public notice is so much more efficient (we think) than private: I can do this, and these many eyes will see me. Particularly in this time, in this culture, you and I can instantly appeal for another's, for many others' attention just by posting on Facebook, on blogs, on web pages. We all know how easy this is, and given how much quicker we notice threat or danger or malevolence, any person wanting you and me to post about them on Facebook, etc., knows that the quickest way to do so is by saying or doing something fearful, or horrible. After all, that I'm writing and you're reading this blog marks you us a correspondents in our global discourse: we're the target.
Enough. I for one need to turn my eyes from the global to the local, from memorials for six people killed in Tuscon, good folks all, to helping close a grave at the local cemetery this afternoon with my dad and the other "gravehands." I need to refocus my gaze on those here up on the mountain, on those here at home. I certainly don't need to forget the international scene, to ignore it, but I do need to balance my attention between the global and the local. And given the great ease with which we notice threat or danger or malevolence, I should intentionally refocus, constantly refocus my attention on acts of kindness and goodness, of simple pleasures and dignities, of such inanities as being polite to each other, of remembering each other, of always remembering each other, since memory is the goal of attention. We, you and I and our public discourse, need this balance desperately. Thank you for reading.
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