• It Is Through The Face That We Encounter God
• A Message of Hope
• Waiting
• An Octopus at Easter.
• Invite relationships
• Transformation
• This Moment
• A Good Story
• Can I Be A Healer?
• The virtue of doubt
• Mary Mackillop, Woman Of Faith
• Fridge Doors And The Rest Of The World
• Entertaining Angels
• More connected than ever, more disconnected than ever
• Feast of Teresa of Avila, 15th October
• The Witness of Maternity Leave
• Something New
• Farewell
• Australian Catholic University is a Public University Open to All
• What if God Was One of Us?
• Zest for life
• Attendance
• Christmas Angel Tree
• A Present For Me
• On being famous
• Reason To Celebrate
• World Youth Day
• May the evening's twilight find me gentle still
• Goodness: God’s Gift To Us
• A time for every purpose under heaven
• The Mad Dash
• The Positive Spirit is Fully Alive
• Its time to change
• Living an Abundant Life

Have you ever arrived at a destination and not remembered the journey? Did you drive through traffic and change gear, and stop, and indicate, without noticing?

Attendance is being present. We transport our bodies to a gathering to be in attendance. While we can be physically attending, our mental attendance is often with the children, bills, or that future holiday.

Attend to what you are doing right now. Are you drinking a cup of coffee while you read this? Are you checking the clock to see how soon you can get away?

Can you attend to your immediate surroundings? Stop what you are doing and listen. What do you hear? Traffic, conversation, birds? This is happening all around us, yet we often do not notice. This is not a bad thing. We are hardwired to desensitise constant stimulus, otherwise it would be a visit to the psych ward for all of us.

Desensitising also trains us into not attending to what really matters. Ever been in an argument? The other person just doesn’t listen, or understand. You might repeat yourself, perhaps in a raised voice. Dammit, they still won’t listen. What would happen if you stopped trying to get your point across, postponed your needs for a minute and listened, really attended to what the other person is saying. What are they actually saying? Are you filtering their message? If they say, ‘I’m hot’, and you feel cold, do you automatically tell them how you are feeling? Do you tell them to open a window? Turn the heater down? Or do you attend, and reflect back, ‘Oh, you are hot. That’s interesting, because I am cold. I wonder how it is that we are feeling different.’

Attending means to really listen, hearing the message without judgement or justification. Listen, reflect back what you hear and be curious. The results are astounding.

Vic Val
Counselling, Signadou, ACT