The Beginning of Devotion ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
March 8, 2026
In one of his most famous passages explaining his decision to live alone in the Concord woods for two years, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…”
To live deliberately, Thoreau thought, meant to strip away anything unnecessary, anything extra from life, that served to distract from his wish to pay attention, to learn all he could about the life around him.
Thoreau was a keen observer, and took the time to watch and study all that unfolded over those two years. He could focus intently on tiny aspects of the natural world. He wrote pages about the appearance of the newly-formed ice on Walden Pond, which he observed by lying flat on the ice. Here’s an excerpt:
(Lucille): “…the ice itself is the object of most interest, though you must improve the earliest opportunity to study it. If you examine it closely the morning after it freezes, you find that the greater part of the bubbles, which at first appeared to be within it, are against its under-surface, and that more are continually arising from the bottom…these bubbles are from 1/80th to 1/8th of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see your face reflected in them through the ice. There may be 30 or 40 of them to a square inch…” (Walden, p. 237)
Our theme this month is Paying Attention, which might seem hardly worth mentioning in these times we are living through. We are being bombarded with more news than we can absorb, much of it sordid or frightening. We regularly feel the need to turn away, turn it off, to head for the woods ourselves to be able to maintain some sort of control. And then you arrive here and hear that paying attention is vital spiritual work. “Maybe not today,” you might be thinking.
But if we’re not sure that attention is an important topic, or a vital practice, just think for a moment about how incredibly powerful our attention is. Think about how everywhere we turn, someone or something is vying for our attention, whether a child, or a pollster, or a politician, or especially an advertiser. Our attention, our ability to focus our attention, to offer it to something or someone, is a tremendous gift, and a source of power. We must learn to harness this power, to better serve ourselves and the world around us.
As Annie Dillard reminded us in our reading a moment ago, the act of paying attention, of being mindful, is a vital spiritual practice urged on us by mystics and religious geniuses of all traditions, across all time. And poets, too, those other religious geniuses, lend their gifts to share this same message.
“To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wildflower,” wrote William Blake. And of course, our contemporary poet, Mary Oliver, told us a great deal about paying attention.
Lucille: An excerpt from Mindful, by Mary Oliver:
“Every day
….I see or hear
……..something
…………that more or less
kills me
….with delight,
……..that leaves me
…………like a needle
in the haystack
….of light.
……..It was what I was born for –
…………to look, to listen,
to lose myself
….inside this soft world –
……..to instruct myself
…………over and over
in joy,
….and acclamation…”
Annie Dillard, in writing her Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, displayed wisdom far beyond her 27 years when she observed that there is more than one kind of seeing, more than one way to pay attention. We have been hearing examples of these two different ways throughout our service this morning. Dillard wrote that when she was most observant, she had to describe to herself in words what she was seeing, to keep a running commentary going in her head. “When I see this way,” she wrote, “I analyze and pry. I hurl over logs and roll away stones…”. (p. 33)
“But,” she went on, “there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go….it’s the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot….When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut.” (Ibid.)
“My own shutter opens.” In other words, Annie Dillard is telling us that we can pay attention, we can see, with our heads, and also with our hearts. We can compare this to Henry David Thoreau’s observations. Most of these are minute descriptions, and very scientific. I understand that climate scientists can refer to Thoreau’s journals to compare air temperatures in the 1850’s with today, the dates when ice melted, the dates when flowers bloomed. Thoreau used his eyes carefully. We don’t know much about what moved his heart, at least at first. He was busy measuring and recording.
The poet Wendell Berry wrote about this in his poem, The Vacation:
Lucille: Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.
This reminded me of my trip to India. As some of you know, I tend to take a lot of photos. And one of the trip leaders mentioned that there is a spiritual practice of contemplative photography, in which people are urged to only take one photo per day. I was appalled. “Maybe next trip,” I thought. But the idea did take root, and reminded me to make sure that I was watching and listening carefully, and not just lining up great camera angles.
Mary Oliver and Annie Dillard find ways to pay attention with both their eyes and their hearts.
Mary Oliver again:
Lucille: from Messenger, by Mary Oliver:
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
“Attention,” wrote Mary Oliver, “Is the beginning of devotion.” (in Upstream, “Teach the Children”).
Where does this lead us? Do we know where to offer the power of our attention? To what are we devoted? Perhaps devoted is too religious-sounding of a word. To what, then, are we dedicated? Family and friends? Our country? Our church or community? Or maybe nature itself, and our beautiful planet?
The act of paying attention, of seeing, the pearl of great price, is the opening of a door to the heart. Why else does it matter if we pay attention, if we seek to observe and to be moved by what we find when we are consciously ‘loving the world’?
Loving the world, learning to be astonished, to feel awe, leads us ultimately to dedication, to devotion, and to gratitude. Paying attention with our eyes and our hearts is a spiritual practice, but it serves to lead us to perhaps the most valuable spiritual practice of all, which is practicing gratitude. For how can we be grateful for what we don’t notice?
What brings tears to your eyes? Think back to observing a beautiful sunset, or the full moon rising over the ocean, and the sudden swelling of feeling in your chest. Perhaps the awe comes to you in hearing a gorgeous piece of music or studying a painting. Perhaps it comes as a poem. Regardless, that feeling offers a religious moment, a moment of gratitude that we are part of this great beauty.
During his time at Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau began to see with his heart. In possibly my favorite passage of Walden, he described the thawing of sand along a frozen railroad bank.
Lucille: Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad…When the frost comes out in the spring…the sand begins to flow down the slopes like lava…As it flows, it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines…I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me – had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe.”
For Thoreau, this was a religious moment, the sense of awe and wonder that made him feel that he was seeing the hand of God at work in the world. Religious moments come to us all, when we are observing with our hearts. We are called to notice the moments as well as what we are observing. In the end, for Thoreau, perhaps living deliberately became learning how to see with more than just his eyes and his journal, and to notice those little glimpses of holiness. Perhaps this is what life had to teach him.
As the snow begins to melt and things long hidden from view begin to re-emerge, let’s celebrate by becoming intentional about noticing the changes and the growth around us; those first green shoots, the lengthening days, the return of warmth. Let’s notice both the changes, and how they make us feel. Let’s watch with our hearts, and claim our power, and be glad.
Lucille: Night, by Sara Teasdale
Stars over snow,
And in the west, a planet –
Swinging below a star.
Look for a lovely thing and you will find it.
It is not far –
It never will be far.
May it be so.
