I’m in the middle seat on a flight to Phoenix. My uncomfortably close neighbor turns and looks at me with questioning, half-desperate eyes, shuts down his e-reader, yanks out his earbuds, and blurts, “Why are we so low?”

I break the news that the plane turned around due to mechanical problems, and we’re just about to land back in St. Louis. “What? When did this happen?”

“Well, the pilot announced it about a half an hour ago,” I tell him. “Hopefully we can still make our connections.”

What I didn’t admit is that I nearly missed the pilot’s message myself. Ensconced in work on my phone, I caught only a word at the tail end (I think I heard the phrase “turn around”), but the pilot’s calm matter-of-fact tone betrayed nothing so urgent as “all your plans have been thrown in the garbage…and, we might die.” I confess, to my shame, I only discovered the pilot’s full communication as I peeked at the text message being crafted by my other unseasonably close neighbor to the right. (Yes, I was that person.)

Unfortunately, my row’s ignorance wasn’t the exception. I overheard multiple people make the same statement about our unlikely altitude—even just a couple minutes before landing. They—okay, even I—simply had no idea what was going on in the tangible world we hurtled through at 500+ mph. In a certain sense, we simply weren’t there.

Our first-year students recently read Genesis 3. In that chapter, God famously asks Adam, “where are you?” I say famously because it’s a ridiculous question for God to ask, as if the omniscient creator of all things doesn’t know the GPS coordinates of this first man.Among the most poignant points I take from God’s question is this; Adam may be physically in the garden of Eden, but he’s simultaneously long gone from paradise.

He has introduced an infinite spiritual distance between himself and his Wise, Loving Creator. Adam has absented himself from the Divine Presence. He has the serpent’s lying earbuds firmly in place, and he’s watching the screen of pride, which offers his very own, godlike knowledge of good and evil.

Now, I don’t believe I or my plugged-in and checked-out neighbors on the airplane were sinning, but nonetheless I wasn’t present to my surroundings. The screen I held didn’t just give me access to another world, as the crumbling copy of Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo sitting in my backpack might have done, but the screen gave me entry to any other world. In effect, because I could be anywhere, I was nowhere. To be any place is to be no place. I was in CA with the people hosting me for a lecture (email). I was in Chicago with a granting organization (website). I was in Springfield with my faculty thinking through curriculum (email). I was at home checking how my beloved partner in life was doing (text). If God had asked me, “where are you?” how would I have answered? Perhaps more importantly, would I have heard the question?

Blah, Blah, nag, nag. Get rid of your cell phone and earbuds. I’ve heard all this.

Actually, that’s not the point.

I’m not even sure how much more attentive and intentionally present people were before 2008 (year of the i-phone).

The point is that presence is precious, and post-fall persons have never been experts at attention. I lament that it takes so much effort to be present to the right thing at the right time. A million bells ring for our attention, which do I heed? The loudest? The one easiest to silence? The most pleasurable? In a letter to a French Poet and friend, Simone Weil wrote, “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Selfishness or prodigality aren’t just about money, but attention. Who knew? To whom do we give eye contact, a warm handshake, a hug, our best smile?

In a writing on education, and in Waiting for God she expands this claim, saying

“prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God.”

These words seem an apt paraphrase of Christ’s own to Martha, “you are anxious and troubled about many things; but one thing is necessary” (Lk 10:41-42).

Since man’s first sin, his presence, that is, his attentiveness, has been disintegrated. He can’t allow himself to be present to God because he is afraid God’s presence will destroy him. He can’t be present to himself because his best self accuses him of sin and makes him feel guilt. He can’t be present to Eve because he blames her for his sin and sees her as a threat. He can’t be present to the world since it has joined in rebelling against him, bringing forth thorns and thistles to him in place of good food. Man is everywhere on the run from attentiveness to what matters most.

So where does that leave me? Where does it put you? Yes, we should create technology-free spaces and times in our daily life, but that isn’t enough to make us reclaim our presence to place, our presence to persons, our presence to God. It seems to me, we will attend to what we love in hope we can attain a deeper, more lasting presence to it, because we have faith it is real, true, and good. Essentially, we need to make ourselves present to God, whose love is mercy before it is a consuming fire. If we are present to Him, we will be all the more present to what He loves, seeing it more accurately and completely and properly through His eyes. Romano Guardini tells us that the prerequisite for prayer is composure, a combination of silence and stillness. Sounds a lot like attentiveness to me. Not the nervous, fretful attention of the anxious, but the deep, profound attention of the lover. That can’t happen unless my feet touch grass, my fingers feel the grain of wood, my ears hear the chirrup of crickets on a chilly evening, and my muscles feel the ache of a hard-day’s work. As humans, we begin by an attentive encounter with concrete realities and work through to a fascination with the transcendent that holds the concrete together. Attention to and presence with the God we can’t sense comes from attending to and being present with the sensible things the ineffable God made.

At San Damiano College for the Trades, we’re taking steps to encourage presence and attentiveness to what matters here, now, and into eternity. Intentional limitations provoke greater attentiveness, so we curate the kinds of things, places, and experiences that call for the attention and presence of our students. Structural choices have to be made. Morning Mass and Night prayer in community, a common meal with table-reading, one dorm building with no TV’s, wifi, or cell phones, one curriculum in the great books where everyone resides together in the same books, worksites that demand attention for safety and learning skills, pilgrimages calling for multiple days of walking and camping, etc. None of these structures make “a hill of beans,” however, unless faith, hope, and love suffuse the person who inhabits them. So most importantly, we pray for the grace of the Holy Spirit to fill our students and everyone connected to the College.

Many thanks to all of you who have turned your attention toward this mission in any way. May you be ever present to the Lord and all He calls you to with focused zeal!

And Now for Some News!

Mike Rowe Scholarships

“The works of their hands come back upon them” (Proverbs 12:14)

A big thanks to the Mike Rowe Works Foundation, and a huge congratulations to Leydon Spang, Michael Newton, Travis Van Horn, and John Falter, who each won a Mike Rowe Work Ethic Scholarship! What a grace this will be for them in helping make the SDC education even more affordable.

Some of our students are sponsored by independent scholarship money given directly by donors. If God’s calling you to support the mission in this way, let us know.

“Where are you?” -God

“Coming Full Square”