May I have your attention, please?

Dear Britney,

Love the new song. Really. And I don't like much of your other work (sorry). But, your music video is not only frustrating and uninsightful, it also is worrying. If I voice these concerns (and make this all too easy joke) I hope you won't hold it against me.

Love

Patrick

The video, besides being a strange fusion of futuristic technology and flaunting Britney's sexuality, is most disturbing in the fact that no single camera shot lasts more than one second. Watch it again if you don't believe me (the very first shot and the comet at the beginning are the only exceptions). It is worse than the most recent episodes Sesame Street, which I had to watch in a psychology class once and count the number of distinct camera shots in a short segment. I don't remember the exact stats, but it was amazing, and frightening that this is what not only kids, but all of us are watching. This is how our brains are being trained.

Ok, I shouldn't be too dramatic, but I can't help noticing this all the time. For instance, I took some 6^th - 8^th graders to a basketball game a few years ago, and as I sat to watch it, I couldn't help but notice that they were constantly moving around, on phones, changing the focus of their attention every couple of minutes. Call me old fashioned, but I just wanted to sit in one place for the duration of the game, focusing on the court. I don't even like it when my cell phone disrupts whatever I am occupied with.

I have, this very weekend, spent literally several consecutive hours studying the same stuff. I can sit down and rehearse the material over and over again for hours on end with little fatigue or loss of concentration. But this does not come naturally, I have trained myself to endure longer attention spans.

A similar, and more meaningful, example is my current practice of lectio divina. I do this once a week and always find it to be profoundly revealing as I listen to and hear and experience the words of Scripture like never before.

This also brings in the question of the object or content of our attention, which is also important. Focusing long and hard at chaos does not do much good, and in fact could be just as hurtful as not attending to any one thing.

But I have digressed from the exhausting and dizzying calaidascope of images that is a disturbing reflection and reiteration of the state of our attention spans. And this is a video of one of the few people in the world that does have the power to capture the enduring attention of a considerable portion of the population.

The reason I am so adamently against just giving into this state of affairs and trying to figure out how to meet a culture with no focused attention is because I think something very important is lost in this development. Really connecting with God often requires intentional, focused attention, which is already difficult to do. God rarely comes at us constantly from all directions at once, and when He does, it seems that there is always another option vying for our attention. I don't care so much if people can't focus on a 10-20 minute sermon, but if we can't find a way to be still and know that God is God (which, granted, does take a lot of practice), I fear that we lose an essential, fundamental way of relating to God.

And it will take more than a plea for God to not hold it against us.