Monthly Archives: November 2023

Lavishing Attention in Uncertain Times

Lately, I’ve been stopping to admire the light a lot.  The way autumnal light, beaming lower on the horizon, bathes the crimsons, ambers, and golds of trees this time of year.  Earlier dusks painting the sky in clear, breathless beauty as I walk to my car under increasingly bare tree limbs.  The warmth of a single candle flickering by the sofa – one among many antidotes to those fast-darkening evenings and the chilly mornings when I rise.  The pastel hues of my daughter’s miniature lava lamp, casting patterns across her ceiling at bedtime to ward off unwelcome shadows.

These may be small details, observations half-formed in a midday or mid-evening moment, but for me they are also potent reminders – calling me to pay attention to the world around me, to the sacred and the small, to the reverence such details and moments can invite.

In An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, writer Barbara Brown Taylor delves lyrically into how being intentional, purposeful, and fully present not only grounds us as human beings but points us toward God and deeper meaning.  In one of the book’s chapters, “The Practice of Paying Attention,” she describes the virtue of cultivating reverence, a practice she now recognizes that she encountered early in her childhood:

“From [my father] I learned by example that reverence was the proper attitude of a small and curious human being in a vast and fascinating world of experience. This world included people and places as well as things. Full appreciation of it required frequent adventures, grand projects, honed skills, and feats of daring. Above all, it required close attention to the way things worked, including one’s own participation in their working or not working.” [19]

Brown Taylor draws on philosopher Simone Weil (among other writers and thinkers), braiding together considerations from several religious traditions as she ponders how truly paying attention – or with a nod to my own English-major desire for verbs with flair! – lavishing attention on the people, places, and things around us can open us up to reverence. Those seemingly small details just might contain multitudes.

In other words, what might at first blush seem like pausing to consider the trivial in fact becomes a path to something far bigger.

Paraphrasing another philosopher, Brown Taylor muses that reverence (borne out of a kind of sustained attention) is ultimately “the recognition of something greater than the self – something that is beyond human creation or control, that transcends full human understanding.”  Reverence, she writes, “stands in awe of something – something that dwarfs the self, that allows human beings to sense the full extent of our limits – so that we can begin to see one another more reverently as well.” [21] 

As a lifelong lover of literature and a longtime teacher, I found additional appreciation for this cycle of attention and reverence, walking students through complex texts and guiding them through the practices of close reading. Carefully attending to details, small moments, nuance, and texture – truly lavishing attention, even between the covers of a novel–can open us up to one another. Reading narratives this way can help us to also read the world, inviting us into one another’s stories. These practices of close reading, in books and in life, help us reckon with our limits even as we also celebrate our part in a human story far greater than our own.

A little over two weeks ago, I was preparing a brief homily for Monday Morning Prayer.  Drawing on the Division of Calling and Spiritual Life’s “Reset/Refresh” theme as well as the year’s morning prayer series “This is How I Sabbath (or Try To),” I decided to reflect on how Sabbath-time can summon us toward this sort of lavish attention. 

 

The scripture for the morning, Psalm 104, delights in the reverent details. The psalmist imagines:

“the sea, vast and spacious, 

teeming with creatures beyond number–

living things both large and small. 

The ships go to and fro…”

Even a sea-monster appears, “frolicking” in the expansive ocean. 

 

The psalm offers a beautiful meditation on how lavishing attention can reorient us, pulling us into reverence.  I found myself pondering and grappling with this anew when, the day before the scheduled Monday Morning Prayer homily, our campus community learned that one of our students had been violently attacked and rushed to a hospital across the state for critical care.

Tomorrow we will gather as a campus to remember Varun Raj Pucha, who tragically died of those injuries, and to lift up his life.  I did not have the privilege of knowing Varun, but I have been grateful for glimpses of him carried through the words of his family, friends, and professors. The pieces of his story and others’ memories of him do not constitute his life, all that he was, or all that he was in the process of becoming. But they can offer us a chance to attend, to revere even as we say goodbye, to gather around a few powerful reminders of a beautiful story that was still being written and of a reverence that beckons us all.

-by Dr. Anna Stewart, ILAS Director

Photo credit: Amy Smessaert, Lutheran Diaconal Association

Valpo embraces Día de los Muertos

Students and faculty will gather at several locations across campus this week to celebrate Día de los Muertos, a Hispanic cultural tradition honoring loved ones who have passed away. The kick-off event will be an evening of crafting and pozole, a traditional Mexican soup, from 6-8 p.m. on Oct. 30. The Valpo community also had the opportunity to submit photos of their loved ones to be displayed on commemorative ofrendas, Spanish for offerings, on the second floor of the Christopher Center Library, Harre Union, Loke Hall and the Gloria Christi Chapel Nov. 2-8.

Sonia Morales, Assistant Director of OMP (Office of Multicultural Programs), and Kat Peters, Assistant Director of the Institute for Leadership and Service (within the Division of Calling and Spiritual Life), have been instrumental in fostering the collaboration that makes these events possible. This year, the celebrations have expanded to other facilities, in part to accommodate students who wouldn’t usually find themselves in the Chapel.

“So, it was a project that was a collaboration between OMP and Calling and Spiritual Life. We wanted to continue working on that, and this year, we wanted to make it bigger,” Morales said. “We wanted to include the library and the Union because [they] are the places where the students are more willing to go.”

Both Morales and Peters are enthusiastic about the opportunities that these partnerships present to reach a wider segment of the Valpo community, and welcome the contributions that other facilities and organizations can contribute.

“It’s really neat, because it does seem like it’s growing. It’s a campus-wide collaboration, which is something that is really important to us here at the Helge [Center] and in Calling and Spiritual Life. [We are] partnering with many places so that we can do projects together,” Peters said.

Morales too expressed the importance of embracing the opportunity to learn from their collaborators and improve their programming by doing so. She hopes that these collaborations will continue to evolve and flourish in the future.

“Something that has been really important is to understand what are things that everyone could bring to the table … We are also learning a lot about the departments that are working with us and we’re thinking [about how] they could keep working with us in different ways,” Morales said.

For Peters, this is an expression of the commitment to holistic education and embracing opportunities that characterize both the university’s mission and the Lutheran faith.

“I think there are some really neat statements out about the university’s calling … For example, it talks about symbols of faith [are] core to our mission, and Lutheran tradition calls us to serve our neighbors, embrace our differences and work to make quality education accessible to all who seek it,” Peters said.

Morales noted the similarities between Día de los Muertos and Christian traditions such as All Saints’ Day. She views the parallels between them as an opportunity for meaningful connection, and a way to come together to process the grief the community has experienced.

“Valpo celebrates All Saints’ Day where we read the names of all who have passed in the previous year … So it’s like we’ve always been doing this. But here’s another specific cultural way we can celebrate and remember, and so we can do this all together,” Peters said. “This is an important part in the healing process. I think with everything going on in the world and coming out of COVID, I don’t think that we’ve processed all of our grief about everything … which is a really healthy thing to do.”

Peters emphasized the mutual benefit of interacting with different cultural traditions, but also believes that Día de los Muertos has an impact that transcends culture. She hopes to continue this in the years to come.

“It’d be great to just keep adding … We are a family and we all get to work together even across cultural differences or bringing different traditions together. And that’s something that’s going to benefit everyone,” Peters said. “So it’s not just a cultural event, it has spiritual and emotional significance that we hope makes a difference in people’s lives.”

Students interested in participating in Día de los Muertos programming can consult the relevant flyers around campus or contact omp@valpo.edu or chapel@valpo.edu for more information.

– Carolyn Dilbeck ’25