We live in a dopamine culture, where many things compete for our attention. We are distracted and worried by many things, and yet we are listless and purposeless at the same time. Church tradition calls this acedia - and attention is the cure. Mary and Martha have a lesson to teach us. Not because action and work and preparation don't matter – they do. But because all of it, at its best, flows from this: from having sat at Jesus' feet, from having fixed our attention on the one thing that will not be taken away from us. May we be transformed, not by trying harder, but by attending more faithfully – to God, to one another, to the life that is waiting for us when we stop being distracted long enough to receive it. Amen.
