A PHRASE of Eliot’s that always haunts me is “distracted from distraction by distraction”, perhaps because, having something of a grasshopper mind, I am constantly distracted. The phrase comes in “Burnt Norton”, the first of the Four Quartets, and its fuller context is:
. . . Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning.
It has its place in the inter-war context of its composition, but you cannot help feeling that something in Eliot had already foreseen the flicker of smartphone screens, each click a distraction from the previous one. But I was distracted before iPhones, one apparently random image suggesting and summoning another in the inscape of my mind, whole trains of thought switching tracks at random. But it is some comfort to know that one is not alone in this affliction.
I remember with what pleasure and recognition, even relief, I read John Donne’s confession, in a funeral sermon of 1626: “I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in, and invite God, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door; I talk on in the same posture of praying, eyes lifted up, knees bowed down, as though I prayed to God; and if God or his angels should ask me when I thought last of God in that prayer, I cannot tell.”
So, if you struggle with distraction, even and especially distraction in a church service or in private prayer, you are at least in good company.
I sometimes think that this is why it is such a blessing to have the same liturgy every week. I never hear it, certainly never pray and indwell it, all in one sitting. A familiar phrase here and there suddenly seems new and luminous, and I “get” it, and really pray it; then I’m off again, thinking about what we’ll make for lunch; and then I’m back in church again, and another luminous phrase, another heartfelt petition, gets a bit of my attention.
Given my fragmentary attention, I am glad of another try the following week. My hope is that, after a lifetime of attending the eucharist, when all my moments of undistracted attention are finally put together, I will have said and meant the whole liturgy, really held up my hands and received Christ, at least once.
Going through scraps of old poetry manuscripts the other day, I came across this little poem, written perhaps 30 years ago, and find that I need to pray it even more now than I did then, to be brought home to Christ and to myself:
A Prayer Before Communion
I call to you for you are calling me
I come to you because you come to me
And here I am, as always unprepared
As always lost, as always slightly scared
So find me, bind me, purify my heart
Begin again in me that I may start
Again in you, be born again in you,
Begin again to trust and to believe you
Hands, lips and heart are open to receive you
So come to me Lord Jesus as I am
And make your home in me, then bring me home.
Join the Revd Dr Malcolm Guite in the Temple Church, London, on Tuesday 17 February at 7 p.m., for “Merlin’s Isle: A Journey in Words and Music”, a concert weaving together poetry and song in celebration of his new four-part poetic cycle, Merlin’s Isle. Tickets £15, or £10 for Church Times subscribers. canterburypress.co.uk/events
