!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.....ATTENTION.....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On their golden wedding anniversary, a couple were kept busy all day with the celebrations and the crowds of relatives and friends who dropped in to congratulate them. So they were grateful when, toward evening, they were able to be alone in the porch, watching the sunset and relaxing after the tiring day.

The old man gazed fondly at his wife and said: ‘Agatha, I’m proud of you.’

‘What was that?’ asked the old lady.

‘I said I’m proud of you.’

‘That’s all right’ she replied with a dismissive gesture. ‘I’m tired of you too’.

We don’t always get back what we expect, and
paying attention can make the difference.

In Acts 3 1-10 we read that when the crippled man saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him. Peter said, "Look at us!"

I can’t help noticing that Peter has asked the crippled beggar to look at him, but the beggar hadn’t actually asked for that. People can avoid having to engage with what will heal them, and looking at someone is more than giving someone your attention, it is acknowledging and expanding their reality with an attention which is beyond being anyone's alone.

This is a healing grace, but the man wasn’t asking for healing, he was asking for money.

Peter couldn’t give the man what he was actually asking for. Perhaps it is just that the apostles didn’t carry silver or gold. Perhaps it is that our desire for money gets in the way and prevents our healing. Perhaps it was more than this.

"Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." Regardless of the money, Peter gave the man what Peter did have, and this resulted in the man becoming strong, where he had previously been weak.

Maybe you have walked past a Big Issue seller in a city and looked at him or her in the eye while saying no thank you, rather than just walking past and ignoring the same Big Issue seller. This provides real dignity, even without the money.

And what did Peter really give the beggar man, apart from his attention? Perhaps nothing else, perhaps this very act of attentiveness in itself is enough to make a crippled man become strong.

Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God.

Sometimes it is in giving attention to ourselves that we notice where we are crippling ourselves. As I was writing this I suddenly noticed the slump in my back and sat up straight.

And it is in giving attention to others that we notice how they open up, how they are no longer begging for mercy in the face of existence, but all of a sudden appraising its wonder and being full of its life.

This very attention is a work of prayer. I was with someone suffering from Alzheimers the other day and noticed her spring back to personhood as a result of the renewed attention being payed to her in the form of an interested and inclusive three-way dialogue.

But sometimes speech is not needed, pure listening is just what brings that person back into the realm of life, and allows them to relate again.

I wonder what Florence Nightingale would have made of the recent suspension of a nurse simply because she politely offered to pray for a patient – I like to imagine that this work of attention would have actually been a requirement of the job of nursing for Florence Nightingale. Because prayerful attention renews our beauty.

The man in our story had been begging at the temple gate called Beautiful. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at this temple gate, called Beautiful.

Having been given attention through Peter he no longer needed to beg for the Beauty of being alive, now he understood that he was beauty – and it was this understanding which enabled him to walk through the gate. No longer did he need to be carried there.

In the Symposium, Socrate’s pupil Plato said that one who contemplates absolute beauty and is in constant union with it will be able to bring forth not mere reflected images of goodness, but true goodness, because one will be in contact not with a reflection, but with the truth. Not with the ideas of God, but with the reality behind them.

The attention which enables us and makes us appreciate beauty was available to all during the life of Jesus. This attention must have lived on, because the writer of Acts was willing and able to to reflect upon it, and tell us these stories about the name of Jesus of Nazareth 4 or 5 decades after his crucifiction.

On recognizing a former beggar, he said, other people were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him – the divine work of attending had spread outwards, as it still spreads outwards today, because it is infinite.

The wonder and amazement of being had filled more people with that prayerful attention to the experience and existence and Being we have called God.

This miraculous and unexpected attention was offered to the disciples through the life of Jesus, and in this narrative of ours it was offered to the beggar through Peter and John, and it still offers itself to us now with an ability to heal.

It is a presence without which we can remain lame. But the paradox is that the beggar didn’t ask for it, he actually wanted something else.

God’s grace is gratuitous and unexpected because it comes to make us fully human despite our circumstances, not because of them.