Thought for the Day: A thought on paying attention.

 Broadcast on The Today programme on February 10th 2023. 

Earlier this week, nearly 19 thousand basketball fans watched LeBron James become the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. And large numbers of those fans captured the historic moment on their smart phones. It’s a predictable sight these days; every major event is closely monitored by a wall of phone screens held aloft, recording every last detail, soon to be uploaded to social media as proof that we were there. Or, perhaps as is often the case, saved to the phone to lurk, unseen and unwatched with all the thousands of other images that were taken, just on the off-chance that we miss anything.

It's a habit that’s not just reserved for momentous occasions. My equivalent sporting event excitement happened last summer when my 9 year old was approaching the finish line in the bouncy hopper race, viewed through my mobile phone of course. If you don’t record it, did it even happen? He won, by the way, or at least, that’s what the footage I recorded tells me.

Reaching for my phone is almost a reflex action, driven by the fear that if I don’t capture it on camera then maybe I’ll forget. It’s an attempt to exert some kind of control over time, but it’s as futile as willing the sand in an hourglass to cease sinking. The moment is gone, whether I’ve captured it digitally or not, and all I’m left with is a memory distorted by having experienced that moment through the screen of a phone.

In the 13^th century, when St Clare of Assisi was alive, mirrors were still a fairly unique curiosity. She writes about using the mirror as a mystical tool to see beyond her own image and ego to discover who Christ really wants her to be. Our smartphones are often used as digital mirrors which reflect what we want others to see. Look at this great concert I’m at! Look at this amazing food I’m eating! Look how much fun I’m having! They often reflect back our own egos.

Clare’s spirituality was characterised by humility, simplicity and joy. With this in mind, I resisted the urge to take my phone with me on my morning walk. Instead, when I saw a beautiful swathe of snowdrops peeking out of the frozen ground, I took that to be God’s permission slip to live in the moment. Maybe it was God’s way of saying “Look! See what I have made. Let’s look at it together.”