Margaret D. McGee is a teacher, guest speaker, and leader of workshops on the topics of spiritual writing and prayer. In this book, she uncovers the presence of God in scripture, nature, everyday events, and the glad tidings of creativity. Her observations and practices for paying attention become sturdy companions for our daily lives. In these hurried and harried times, most of us rarely slow down to savor what we are doing and to see even the smallest acts as part of the unfolding Divine plan.
To help us see our relationship to God's time, McGee has organized this volume into twelve chapters following the Christian liturgical year. Each one contains a narrative, a prayer, suggested scripture readings, and a spiritual practice. McGee shows us how to spiritually read the details of our lives with essays on a dream, a leaf, a broken doll, a bowl of soup, a state of fear, a place of freedom, a word of scripture, a cloud of witnesses, and a face across a table. The end result is a greater appreciation for the art of paying attention:
"The better we pay attention, the more God meets us at every turn, asking only to be seen, smelled, tasted, touched, heard, and loved. One moment of attention turns into a prayer of power and intimacy. It is a way of prayer that can be done anytime, anywhere, as part of any activity. It has two steps.
Slow down.
Pay attention."
