By Andrew Shivone.
I recently attended a professional baseball game in Texas. The game was played in a brand-new, multi-billion-dollar stadium that possesses every amenity one could imagine. The game was played indoors at a very comfortable 70 degrees, and refreshments were available for delivery within five minutes of ordering them on a free app.
What struck me, however, was how hard it was to watch the game. Unless the ball was actively in play, the video boards and speakers were constantly either "entertaining" the crowd or selling a product.
There was - and I mean this quite literally - not a moment of silence throughout the whole evening. The slow drama of baseball, which can only be enjoyed when one pays close attention, was drowned in a tsunami of noise.
It is curious that all of this activity, which is supposed to create an atmosphere of excitement and engagement, had a sedative effect on the crowd. Hardly anyone seemed entertained.
After the game, I was reminded of a small but insightful essay by philosopher Josef Pieper, "Learning How to See Again," in his book Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation. There, he makes the point that the incessant onslaught of images and noise dulls our sensitivity to reality.
He suggests two remedies that I think are especially valuable for Catholic schools today.
First, he suggests that we undergo a personal regimen of abstinence and fasting from the barrage of noise. The goal here is to keep the "noise of daily inanities at a distance" in order to open up space for silent and careful observation and reception.
But merely being silent and passive is not enough. So Pieper adds a second suggestion: that the most effective remedy is "to be active oneself in artistic creation, producing shapes and forms for the eyes to see." He writes that the "mere attempt to create an artistic form compels the artist to take a fresh look at the visible reality; it requires authentic and personal observation."
What Pieper describes here is precisely what Catholic schools should attempt to do in their classrooms. We first attempt to create a sort of tranquility, a peaceful atmosphere in classrooms and other school spaces, that at first requires a little abstention and self-denial. But this is only a first condition for learning. The second is getting the students themselves to actively create, either by engaging in real conversations, singing music, sketching an object, or arguing a thesis.
Even if the students never become composers, never paint a masterwork, or even have to make public arguments, these activities are highly useful. This is because all of these activities are not only done for the sake of developing particular skills or learning a particular subject, but also to learn how to be attentive and caring to the reality around them.
By learning how to make, we learn how to perceive and attend. One could even go so far as to say we learn something of the suffering of love.
Let us go a little further, even than Pieper here. The effort to create and know not only helps us be attentive to the world and people around us but helps us learn how to attend to God in prayer.
The habit of study and careful creation bears its greatest fruit in our loving union and contemplation of God. Certainly, the ability to do this is a grace, but like all graces, it is a grace that works through and in our own efforts.
The great Jewish philosopher, Simone Weil, points this out in her beautiful essay on study and prayer:
If we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a problem of geometry, and if at the end of an hour we are no nearer to doing so than at the beginning, we have nevertheless been making progress each minute of that hour in another more mysterious dimension. Without our knowing or feeling it, this apparently barren effort has brought more light into the soul. The result will one day be discovered in prayer. Moreover, it may very likely be felt in some department of the intelligence in no way...
