Fr John’s Moment of Christ, in the second chapter, he is talking about how to deal with distractions. These are some of the points that he makes. The first thing to do is to ignore the distraction, not to negotiate with it, or flirt with it but just drop it, ignore it. This then begins to develop an inner quality of stillness. So the distracted mind is constantly mobile, constantly restless and we feel this even physically, sometimes. You know, when you are churned up emotionally, it is difficult to sit still. You want to get up and do things. But as we ignore the distractions as they arise, we begin to develop this quality of hesychia, the word that means ‘stillness’ or ‘silence’.
( Attention and Love 1 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
