Time for a Spiritual Audit?

An audit can bring to mind intimidating encounters with government tax officials at this time of year. However, in this case, we’d like to suggest focusing not on your financial assets, but on your ATTENTION. Our attention is finite — we only have so much time in a day, and where we choose to focus our attention can reveal where our priorities may not be as well aligned with our spiritual goals as we would like. It can be helpful to start by monitoring how we focus our attention during the day. Howard Rheingold wrote that “Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention.” Scriptural direction phrases it a bit differently, but along the same lines, telling us to keep our attention on the things of God and not those of man.

There are many demands on our attention in this modern world, and lots of devices, products, causes, and, ultimately, people vying to capture our attention. You might say it is the commodity of the Internet age. Advertisers have known this for a long time, but with social media platforms, the competition for attention — eyeballs, page views, likes, retweets, shares, etc. — is ever more intense. It is all too easy — and common — for us to view the attention we receive and give as a reflection of our self-worth or that of others. We are drowning in a sea of information and noise, clamoring for our attention, and it is easy to fall into the trap of believing the judgments and opinions we see there and letting them direct us. There is a useful phrase in information technology we can apply here, “garbage in, garbage out,” which means that if we fill our minds with unhelpful information, opinions and beliefs, then our own thinking, beliefs, words, and actions will also suffer.

Another important aspect of an attention audit is to consider the attention we seek for ourselves. A baby needs attention; a child demands attention; an adult feels affirmed by attention. We are social beings, after all, and getting attention for positive reasons can reinforce good behaviors in us. But much of the attention received by people in the techno-sphere of social media and news feeds is of the negative type. It is a sad fact that negative news, comments, and loud opinions gain more attention, so this creates incentives for those who crave attention to behave in negative ways, express negative opinions, and follow the herd down the garbage-strewn path of all that is bad about society’s use of these modern means of social communication. Too many people these days pursue any kind of social media attention as a way of feeling that affirmation that we used to get from one another in person through a kind word of thanks.

We would like to suggest that you conduct your own attention audit as part of your Lenten practice of conversion this year, focusing both on where you give your finite attention during the day, and where you seek or receive attention. Where does our Lord fit into your attention budget? How much of your attention do you give to Him, and how attentive are you to what He wants you to notice, learn and do during your day? Armed with knowledge from such an audit, you can bring this before the Lord in prayer and ask Him to help you make changes to where you direct and seek attention. This small step can lead to big results if you continually ask the Lord for guidance as you seek to conform yourself to His will.

— St. Scholastica Evangelization Committee, evangelization@stscholasticaerie.org