Explainer
Attention
Creed
8 min read

Stepping away from the incessant immediacy of how we live today

Despite the daily distractions of digital life, we really need to pay attention to attentiveness, argues Mark Scarlata.

Mark is a lecturer and priest. He’s the author of several books and his latest, Wine, Soil and Salvation, explores the use of wine throughout the Old and New Testament. 

A corrugated sheet iron wall graffited in large blue letters that say 'All we need is more likes.'
Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash.

On a train from Cambridge to London, I sat down next to a smartly dressed woman who had her phone and laptop out on the small folding table. Of course, normal etiquette for early morning commuters is to maintain silence as much as possible, though this seems to be less and less the case these days. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled and tried to clear my thoughts for the day ahead. All was well until the woman’s phone notification interrupted my meditations. The loud Microsoft tune blared throughout the carriage but especially in my ear. I thought she would frantically reach for her phone and apologetically switch it to silent or vibrate but she didn’t.  

After five more successive notifications I put in my noise-cancelling headphones but even they couldn’t stop the distracting tune from reaching my ears. I tried to read but couldn’t and then thought I’d at least send some emails, but the notifications kept coming. It felt like her phone went off about fifty times over a fifty-minute train ride. I’m probably exaggerating but the effect was the same in that I was so distracted (and exasperated!) that I couldn’t get anything done.  

There is something about even the smallest distractions that prevent us from finding our rhythm. Whether we’re trying to accomplish a task, playing a sport, gardening, reading, or whatever it is, distractions keep us from being able to focus our attention and the sum of our thoughts on what it is we are trying to do.  

With so many distractions in our lives we are left with little chance of finding healthy rhythms and may even feel overwhelmed with a sense of exhaustion. 

In an essay on education, French philosopher Simone Weil writes,  

‘Quite apart from explicit religious belief, every time that a human being succeeds in making an effort of attention with the sole idea of increasing his grasp of truth, he acquires a greater aptitude for grasping it, even if his effort produces no visible fruit.’ 

Her point is that intellectual and spiritual growth comes from an ability to focus our attention and to contemplate the things which we can comprehend and those which we are yet to understand. Progress is not simply about how much work we put in, or how much effort we put in, but how much attention we pay to all that we set out to do. 

The difficulty in this digital age, however, is that we can struggle to find any kind of uninterrupted time in daily life. The internet and our devices have so permeated our lives that they create a world besieged by distractions to the point where life becomes merely a series of interruptions. Countless notifications, emails, social media or messaging apps all reduce our ability to con­centrate for any significant length of time. With so many distractions in our lives we are left with little chance of finding healthy rhythms and may even feel overwhelmed with a sense of exhaustion. 

In her Seen & Unseen article on ‘bed-rotting’, Lianne Howard-Dace writes of the recent trend of taking a day of self-care by staying in bed. She raises the important issue of sabbath rest and the biblical discipline of taking one day a week to cease from our work in the world. She also raises questions of how we might go about incorporating that rest into our lives. The discipline of keeping sabbath should also incorporate the practice of attention and cultivating our ability to be present with God and with others. This was the original rhythm of sabbath that God established in creation and when he later gave Israel the sabbath.

To inhabit sabbath time is to break from our daily routines, to cease from our work in the world so that we might find both mental and physical refreshment. 

There are two key moments in the Bible that first describe the rhythm of sabbath rest. The first is in the beginning of Genesis when God creates the heavens and the earth in six days. He ceases from all his work on the seventh day when he consecrates time and rests. The second is the Exodus when God delivers the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. He leads them through the Sinai Peninsula and establishes in them a new rhythm for life. 

In the Exodus story we’re told that God is like a father caring for Israel his ‘firstborn son’ as the former slaves adjust to their newfound freedom. He provides them with manna, or heavenly bread, that sustains them in their forty years of wandering. The gift, however, is followed by a command that the people should gather manna for six days as they travel through the desert but on the seventh day they are to rest from all their work. The Lord will provide their bread for that day, but the people are to cease from all activity and rest. 

It's hard to imagine how many distractions they faced trying to set up and take down tents whilst moving family, flocks and possessions across the desert. Yet God wants to give these former slaves a new pattern, a new rhythm of life that will refresh them. The backbreaking labour in Egypt that never ceased is now replaced by a rhythm of work and rest. 

God establishes one day for his people to pause, to reflect and to turn their attention away from their work in the world to the beauty of the world they inhabit. As they cease from their work, they are able to be present with one another and attentive to the God who delivered them to freedom.  

Jewish rabbi and professor Abraham Joshua Heschel writes:  

‘The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time. To turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.’

To inhabit sabbath time is to break from our daily routines, to cease from our work in the world so that we might find both mental and physical refreshment. 

To turn towards the mystery of creation on the sabbath and to experience God’s rest also requires that we turn away from distraction. The Israelites put down their work in the wilderness and the distractions of travel so that they could rest with one another. Though they didn’t have smartphones buzzing and beeping with notifications, I’m sure it was still a challenge to stop, to rest, and to be attentive to God’s holiness in time. 

The Israelites celebrated sabbath rest together. Their consecrated time was a communal time of joy and celebration. This new rhythm given by God strengthened bonds in families and communities and brought a corporate sense of rest. By setting aside the concerns of work and the distractions of life, the Israelites became attuned to God and attuned to one another. This pattern for life, however, is sadly missing for many in our digital world today which can be a very lonely place for many.  

We struggle to find a rhythm in our own lives because we can no longer be attentive amidst the distractions of our world.

Harvard sociologist Sherry Turkle’s compelling book, Alone Together, docu­ments some of the experiences of young people who are always connected through social media and yet feel an immense sense of loneliness. She reflects on how digital technolo­gies and social media affect our social lives and our ability to engage with each other face-to-face.  

‘We fill our days with ongoing connection, denying ourselves time to think and dream. Busy to the point of depletion, we make a new Faustian bargain. It goes something like this: if we are left alone when we make contact, we can handle being together.’ 

A quick glance at the Pew Research Center’s survey insights on the effects of internet technologies offers eye-opening testimonies to some of their negative impacts. From your average person to experts in the field of neuroscience, many bear witness to the detriments the internet is having on their ability to think, concentrate and relate to one another. We may have had similar experiences. We struggle to find a rhythm in our own lives because we can no longer be attentive amidst the distractions of our world. 

Keeping the Sabbath in the digital age is no easy task. The very thought of turning off our phones or stepping away from our devices might cause deep anxiety in some. But as we look back to the manna story, we recall the lessons that Israel learned in the wilderness ‒ to experience rest means to put down our work, to cease, and to trust in God’s provision.  

Technology itself is not the problem. Technology that is used to manipulate our behaviour and leads to addictive tendencies is a problem. The question for many of us is are we allowing technology to destroy healthy rhythms in our lives that create anxiety and stress rather than rest? Sabbath offers a different form of behaviour modification. It establishes a ritual and a pattern in our lives to help cultivate attentiveness, rest, communion with others and worship. 

This is not to say that we need to abandon all technology and go back to the agrarian ways of our ancestors (though sometimes I think I could use such a change!). It does, however, mean that the path to rest in the contemporary world requires us to step back and examine how technologies are influencing our physical and mental well-being. Practicing the sabbath opens our lives up to the rhythm God has established for his whole creation where we can stop, cease, and offer our deepest attention through a weekly ritual of celebrating holy time. We can step away from the incessant immediacy of doing everything now and take time to rest. 

God never forces the gift of sabbath on people. Instead, he invites us to experience a new rhythm of life, a rhythm of work and rest where we are refreshed as we grow into the fullness of our humanity.  

Establishing sabbath rituals takes time and effort. It’s hard work to rest well, especially when we’re constantly being pulled away by digital distractions. Yet the sabbath is the perfect antidote to a culture of now that can so easily consume us and keep us from experiencing God’s rest and refreshment. Sabbath offers us the rhythm of creation, the rhythm of the land and the rhythm that leads to wholeness and life. 

Article
Creed
Death & life
Easter
Film & TV
9 min read

Harry Potter and the mysteries of death

Horcruxes and our digital consciousness

Jonathan is a priest and theologian who researches theology and comedy.

Hermoine rests her head on the shoulder of Harry Potter.
Harry and Hermione at the grave of his parents.
Warner Bros.

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with some friends that has stuck with me. One of them is a palliative care doctor, and we were discussing medical trends which seek the extension of life at all costs. My friends are Jewish, and we as were comparing religious notes, it was unsurprising that they asked me: "well what do Christians think about death?" 

I replied, without really thinking: "Well, death is the enemy that is defeated." Somewhat to my surprise, their response was quite negative. "Oh, I don't like that idea. That pushes us towards denying our mortality, and trans-humanism, and the inability to let aged relatives go. We need to become better at welcoming death, at recognising it as part of our humanity." 

And as I groped to try and explain why that wasn't quite what I meant, the best analogy I could find for articulating what Christians think about death came from Harry Potter. And in the years since that conversation, it is still the best analogy that I can find to talk about mortality. 

So, here is the version of what I wish I had said. 

The Harry Potter books have many themes, but above all they are about death. That may sound unlikely for a series of books apparently aimed at children, but the evidence stacks up... 

The main character is an orphan, and the majority of people he comes close to will die across the seven books. (Now seems as good a time as any to mention that the rest of this article will basically all be spoilers, so maybe stop now if you've been putting off reading the books for the last 20 years. I'm also going to assume you are at least reasonably familiar with the plot). 

Harry's life is defined by the death of his parents and his own close shave with mortality as a baby, and as the books continue the body count gets almost ludicrously high. 

Indeed, the author J.K. Rowling has said that Harry is "the prism through which I view death in its many forms." 

Unsurprisingly, given how central the theme is, there is a certain amount of explicit reflection on death, even if it is somewhat vague. Thus, we find that: "to the well organised mind, death is but the next great adventure." Dying hurts not at all, but is "quicker and easier than falling asleep." Those who die can "go on," perhaps by "boarding a train." 

If all of this sounds a touch sentimental and the sort of thing that might appear in bad funeral sermons, it is paired with descriptions of grief that are visceral and deeply moving. (I may have cried more than once whilst doing the "research" for this article). 

But where the discussion of death gets really interesting, at least to me, is in the plot, and the metaphysics that underpins it. By metaphysics I just mean the whole picture of the structure of reality that makes the world of Harry Potter work. 

And in this metaphysics we find that death is indeed an enemy. This becomes clear partly through the sheer excruciating depiction of loss that runs through the books - how could something that causes this much pain be anything but an enemy? - but in book seven it is also made explicit. 

In one of my favourite moments of the whole series, Harry stands before his parents' gravestone, and reads the epitaph: 

'"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death"... A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic. "Isn't that a death Eater idea? Why is that there?" 

"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry," said Hermione, her voice gentle. "It means... you know... living beyond death. Living after death."' 

In Harry and Hermione's reaction to the quote on his parent's tombstone we find that there are multiple ways for death to be an enemy. 

The Deathly Hallows sounds eerily like a current technological advancement: the rising trend of griefbots.

Book seven, in fact, presents three ways to defeat death, and they are highly illuminating. 

Firstly, there are Horcruxes. This is Voldemort's project for immortality: the division of his soul via murder and the darkest magic, and the implantation of those parts of the soul into objects which guarantee that, even should he die, he will live on.  

This is, I think it's fair to say, not a vision of the death's vanquishing which the books present as appealing - Voldemort is the darkest wizard of living memory, and the creation of his Horcruxes takes him deeper into evil than anyone has ever gone. Yet it has strange parallels to various current attempts at death defiance. Dividing your soul up and placing it in objects sounds pretty similar to me to uploading your consciousness into a computer. 

Now I'm not saying that all transhumanists are evil wizards whose projects rely on murder, but I do wonder if the same impulse lies behind Horcruxes and downloaded consciousness. 

There is, in both, the same fear of death, the same refusal to accept that my life might end. And there is the same default assumption that the body doesn't really matter - that the centre of my being is somewhere else, and that I can separate it from this inconvenient vessel which is so subject to injury and decay. The inevitability of bodily death is acknowledged, but life can go on even if my body fails, because I can place myself into objects. What matters is my consciousness, and that can be made eternal. 

The second option is a little more complex: the Deathly Hallows. These are three strange, mysterious objects, possession of which promises to make the bearer "master of death." The wand that gives murderous power. The stone that brings back the dead. The cloak that conceals. 

The Hallows dress up their promise in esoteric garb - they offer a quest for the initiated that requires a certain embrace of mystery, and they certainly seem friendlier than Horcruxes, since no one has to die to make them.  

But in the end, as Dumbledore admits, they are not really that different from the Horcruxes, for those who seek them also respond to the temptation to defy death, just like Voldemort. And if Horcruxes are about preserving the soul in the face of the inevitability of bodily death, the Hallows tease the possibility of avoiding death altogether, through the exercise of power. 

The wand gives the power of invincibility and conquest: the avoidance of death through the murder of all who might threaten to kill. 

The cloak gives the power to hide, to keep out of trouble, to evade death by escape. 

And the stone? The stone overcomes the loss of death by bringing its victims back, by refusing to accept that those we love might leave us.  

Again, the Deathly Hallows sounds eerily like a current technological advancement: the rising trend of griefbots. There is the same attempt to respond to grief by clinging to simulations of those whom we mourn, and the same despair at the end of the line. For the dead do not belong with the living, we are told, and legend has it the first owner of the stone was driven to suicide. 

The Hallows attempt to deny death through power, and this is why Dumbledore found them so alluring, and so destructive: they promised to wind back his own loss while giving him the victory he thought would give his life meaning. 

And yet, in reality, even when Harry unites them all, they don't give what they promise. Indeed, they only work to their full power when they are used for humbler ambitions: to hide friends from danger, to perform wondrous magic without boasting in the glory of the wand, or to face death with the comforting presence of those who have gone before. 

For the stone only becomes available to Harry when he finally embraces the third way to defeat the death. The way his parents believed in.  

Death, in the Potter books, is defeated by dying. Or perhaps more specifically, by dying for love - love of children, love of friends, love of a world gone tragically wrong.  

Harry's mother protected her son from dying multiple times, through the power of her sacrificially loving surrender. Dumbledore, in a complex way, protects Malfoy and saves the Elder Wand from Voldemort, thereby protecting the whole wizarding world, through his voluntary death. Even Snape, in the bitterest and most twisted story of them all, ends up giving Harry what he needs to win and finding a measure of redemption, in and through his own murder. 

And, in the climax of this long, convoluted story, Harry avoids death by going willingly to die. Because he loves his friends. Because he hates others dying for him. Because he recognises the terrible duty he faces, the terrible path Dumbledore has laid out for him, and he loves too much to run. 

Voldemort is wrong. Love does conquer death. 

The parallels to the Christian vision of death are stark. The quote on the tombstone which sparks these reflections for Harry (and for me) is in fact from the Bible. "The last enemy that shall be defeated is death" is a profoundly Christian idea. 

Yet my friends were right to react negatively to what they thought I meant by death being an enemy. 

For, just like the good guys in Harry Potter, Christians have traditionally been suspicious of attempts at immortality on our own terms. The Bible, I would suggest, knows nothing of a technological defeat of death, whether through downloading our consciences, or radical life extension, or technologies of power. Death cannot be staved off by any of our own work. 

But this does not mean that death is a good thing, simply a part of human existence which we would do well to welcome and learn to get along with (though I do think we would do better to think about death more, and be more honest about its existence).  

Death is an enemy. It is the final enemy. We are right to rage against it. To grieve those whom we lose. To feel its existential weight. 

Yet, perhaps paradoxically, we should not fear it. For death is an enemy that has been vanquished, but vanquished through Jesus' death.  

Immortality is not, for Christians, something we achieve, but something that is given to us. We believe in the Saviour who dies, and who rises again, and in whose resurrection, as strange as it may sound, we also will be raised. Death is defeated by love, but it is not our love, it is God's love for us. 

This gift, according to the early Christian writers, can only be received by going through death, not by avoiding death. Indeed, Paul's letters, which make up most of the New Testament, are full of the insistence that the pattern of Christian life is always death first, then life. Death in baptism, to new life in Christ. Death to sin, to life in freedom. Bodily death, to bodily resurrection. 

And so, what I should have said to my friend, is that Hermione is right. Death is the final enemy to be defeated, but this does not mean the ways of the Death Eaters. It does not mean projects of immortality, whether rooted in science, or a mystery cult, or power over others. 

Rather it means it life after death - a life that is given to us, by our saviour who has been through death and defeated it. 

Death is the enemy but it is not our enemy to defeat. That victory was won for us, on Easter Sunday 2000 years ago, in a cemetery near Jerusalem, when Jesus rose again. 

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