distraction on Distraction

Distracted from distraction by distraction

Distraction, at least the dangerous kind I’m referring to, is shifting our attention from something of greater importance to something of lesser importance. Our fundamental and most dangerous problem ...

From drugs and alcohol to TV and workaholism, we are increasingly a society that fulfills T.S. Eliot’s description of a people “distracted by distraction.” There is hardly a public menace we can name ...

A gladiator's first distraction is his last.

One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace...

The journalist Andrew Sullivan has some strong words of advice for the modern church,  If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, p...

The American philosopher and psychologist William James once defined human attention as a “withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opp...

If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly t...

One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace...

Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing thes...

The desert saints said that the beginning of renouncing a thought is simply noticing it. That is part of what I’m doing in my quarter hours—I am noticing, and naming, and then, for a few minutes, quar...

Modernity slowly weakened spirituality, by design and accident, in favor of commerce; it downplayed silence and mere being in favor of noise and constant action. The reason we live in a culture increa...

In the first chapter of her book, Get Out of Your Head , author Jennie Allen shares a vulnerable and honest moment from her own life about just how hard it can be to focus in a world of distraction...

We have been created by God, to be loved by God, and to receive our identity from God. But in our everyday lives, as we go about our work, school, interacting with our family and friends, we don’t alw...

We bless you, O God, most high and Lord of mercy. You are always doing great and inscrutable things with us, glorious and wonderful, and without number. You grant us sleep for rest from our infirmitie...

Jesus, you sow yourself The Word of Truth, generously The Word of Life, graciously Defend us from the Evil One Who seeks to snatch us away Fortify us for hard times and costly discipleship That we m...

“It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”

We rarely find answers in the distractions. But oh what possibilities live within the quiet of solitude. In my fear to be alone, I distracted myself away from the deep beauty of my own solitude.

The biggest impediment to concentration is your computer's ecosystem of interruption technologies: IM, email alerts, RSS alerts, Skype rings, etc. Anything that requires you to wait for a response...

We want to be interrupted, because each interruption brings us a valuable piece of information. To turn off these alerts is to risk feeling out of touch, or even socially isolated.

Money cannot purchase joy. It buys temporary distractions.

As we begin, we confess that our attention wanders. We pray: God of light and life, We know that we don’t always listen well to your word Our lives are full of distractions We pay attention to thi...

Smartphones make it possible for the attention economy to target our little attention gaps as we transition between tasks and duties. Our attention may be slightly elastic enough to fill up every empt...

If you have never had any distractions you don't know how to pray.

An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.

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 ...

We ignore so much stuff for a simple reason: if we didn’t, we’d quickly be overwhelmed, our brains flooded until they seized up. Depending on the kind of information, it takes our brains some amount o...

You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.

Help us in this time of worship to be still and know that you are God. In quietness we would hear your voice calling us away from the discordant noises of the everyday world, that our spirits might be...

As we travel through the New Testament, it becomes clear that Jesus’ disciples often get distracted, almost like they have a case of spiritual attention deficit disorder. They quickly lose focus and w...