‘Attention is a moral act because it creates the world and creates us’. Iain McGilchrist
We spent last Christmas in Lanzarote with my brother. His favourite spot to sit and read in the morning is the one mentioned in this poem.
After he went back home, we stayed on for a couple more weeks.
One morning I sat where he had sat and saw what he had seen. And then, suddenly, I saw two sparrows that would have cost you a farthing each in the sparrow markets of Jerusalem in AD30. Or, more accurately, one tenth of a drachma. Not much in any case. Yet, according to Jesus, their value is so high that just one of them dying is felt by Life itself.
Seeing those two sparrows flash in the gap between two trees made me think: if I hadn’t sat there that morning, to what extent would any of that incident have happened? And if it had happened anyway, even if I had not been sitting there, from whose perspective did happen?
The sparrows’?
God’s?
Nobody else was there.
The View
‘Attention is a moral act because it creates the world and creates us’. Dr Iain McGilchrist
If I had not sat here
this exact same spot
with the view of the hill
through the trunks of the trees
through the red and white bougainvilleas
bright in late December’s
early morning sun
through the African Wintersweet
with its purple black berries
the light wind still with east in it
lifting just some leaves just so
I would not have seen
two sparrows
dart between those palms
my right to my left
going somewhere
chattering and suddenly gone
and none of this would have happened
and could never happen again.