ATTENTION, INATTENTION, AND DIVINE PURSUIT: ON THEOLOGY AND NEURODIVERGENT EXPERIENCE
Liberation from Oppression, by P. Solomon Raj.
Many theologians see mastery of one’s thoughts as a necessary step towards spiritual maturity. The legacy of the Desert Christians, for example, is undergirded by such a commitment. These men and women devoted their lives to encountering God and embodying faith through ascetic training. Their training required, among other things, cultivating a watchfulness over their thoughts. Mastering thoughts, whether voluntary or involuntary, whether bothersome or plain old evil, proved crucial to attaining hesychia, or what the desert monastics understood as “a graced depth of inner stillness”. (1) Jesuit scholar William Harmless notes that hesychia can be reached through “inner work”: (2) techniques of introspection, (3) meditation, (4) self-control and caution towards one’s thoughts, (5) and focused prayer. (6) Upon reaching hesychia, the faith practitioner can “look upon” and “be inseparable” from God, with a fullness ascertained only by the most trained and devoted. (7)
In many ways, the plight of the Desert Christians is familiar to us today. At every corner, our attention is hunted by brands and digital applications, our thoughts manipulated by advertisements, marketing firms, and Internet algorithms. We know intimately the struggles of sustaining our focus and training our attention. We are on an uncomfortable journey complicated by the allure of social media, online forums, and other modes of pursuing short-term bursts of dopamine. I will admit I find my personal social media habits untenable, my attachment to certain platforms unbecoming and all-consuming. My attention is often elsewhere. And I’m displeased by it. Here, the committed work of the Desert Christians can guide me and others towards therapeutic and spiritually advantageous practices to manage their thoughts, their attentiveness, and reclaim their focus. Aspiring towards singularity of mind, focused prayer, and ease in navigating thoughts can equip believers with tools to, as Evagrius of Ponticus notes, “take care of yourself.”
The disciplines of attention adopted by the desert monastics and others within the Christian tradition can bear spiritual fruits and bring believers closer to God. Yet this tradition also bears the risk of exclusion. The desert monastics’ insistence that tempered thoughts allow access to greater spiritual insights may be a necessary and edifying pronouncement for the theologically scattered. But it can also further ostracize neurodiverse believers, who may already struggle to “fit in” to normative understandings of attention, focus, and faith.
Consider, for instance, how a believer with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) might interact with the wisdom of the desert monastics. Those with ADHD often experience difficulties related to executive functioning. According to Janice Rodden, executive functioning refers to the cognitive and mental abilities aiding people in goal-directed action. Those with executive dysfunction struggle to self-regulate, to organize, set schedules, commit to and complete tasks. Executive functions, says Rodden, begin developing by age two, and are fully developed by age 30. Yet those with ADHD often are 30 to 40 percent delayed in development. These delays can result in interpersonal challenges with memory, planning, emotional regulation, and social skills.
One faculty of executive function that is impaired by ADHD is focus—one’s ability to find, sustain, and shift attention as needed. This impairment can vary across types of ADHD. For example, the American Psychiatric Association notes that those with inattentive type ADHD may have a short attention span, experience trouble holding attention on tasks or activities, and are often distracted by stimuli. Others with ADHD may hyperfocus on a singular task, while neglecting other tasks and commitments (regardless of importance). At first glance, these manifestations may come across as selfishness, laziness, blatant disregard, or disrespect. But these are mischaracterizations that reflect the ignorance of those unfamiliar with the inner workings of the human brain.
We must consult the wisdom of neuropsychology to avoid pathologizing neurodivergent experiences. In the case of ADHD, one’s attention is not impeded by demons or, as Augustine might suggest, disordered desires. Rather, it’s a consequence of depleted neurotransmitters, impairment in the prefrontal cortex, and even comorbidities such as anxiety and depression. Lacking this insight, we might delay our spiritual siblings’ diagnoses and access to therapies and pharmacological interventions that would offer alleviation and affirmation. In fact, that is often exactly what happens; though 4-5% of adults have ADHD, few receive a diagnosis. And women often do not receive a diagnosis until adulthood, after spending their formative years struggling to understand the difficulties they faced in spiritual and secular spaces. To further illustrate my concern, I return to the Desert Christians.
In his writing “On the Holy Fathers of Sketis and on Discrimination”, St. John Cassian relates a conversation between Abba Moses and Germanos, a friend of Cassian. Germanos and others inquire as to how to achieve perfection and draw nearer to God. Abba Moses emphasizes the need for purity of heart, achieved through contemplating God. Germanos asks: “How does it happen that even against our will many ideas and wicked thoughts trouble us, entering by stealth and undetected to steal our attention? Nor only are we unable to prevent them from entering, but it is extremely difficult even to recognize them. Is it possible for the mind to be completely free of them and not be troubled by them at all?” (8) Germanos’ words are a balm for believers bogged down by demanding thoughts. Abba Moses’ response offers further consolation: “It is impossible for the mind not to be troubled by these thoughts.”
Yet the rest of his response risks the exclusion I cautioned against: “But if we exert ourselves, it is within our power either to accept them and give them our attention, or to expel them. […] The amending of our mind is also within the power of our choice and effort”. (9) From here, Abba Moses insists that meditation on God’s law, psalms, fasting, vigils, and other practices can generate this expulsive power.
The Abba does not lose sight of God’s grace and human ineptitude, but he upholds the power of effort. Perhaps to North American ears, his words echo the logic of personal responsibility, which insists positive outcomes are within our power, from pandemic response to alleviating climate distress. Failure is felt and borne personally— even if such failure occurs at a structural level.
How might a believer with ADHD encounter the words of Abba Moses? Do they receive these words as gentle guidance, or are they bracing for the familiar chorus that calls their executive dysfunction “pure laziness”, their struggles proof they “aren’t trying hard enough”?
Furthermore, if a neurotypical spiritual leader encounters neurodiverse believers, he might be tempted to interpret their frustrations as a sign of misdirection towards “worldly concerns and to matters of the flesh, to pointless and useless conversation,” as the Abba says. (10) Such an interpretation would only reinforce the shame, apathy, and frustration that neurodivergent individuals feel. Worse still, undiagnosed parishioners might accept prevailing understandings of faithful devotion as normative and interpret their difficulty to conform to these standards as a spiritual deficiency. Instead of pursuing diagnosis or support, they might internalize this and other scruples and “bear their cross” quietly.
What is needed, then? We do not need to erase the legacy of the desert monastics, nor their wisdom. The desert monastics are right: we should pay attention to our thoughts, but we must do so while attending to the experiences of neurodiverse faith practitioners. We need to join the theological wisdom we have inherited from the Church with the insights we have gained from neuroscience. In doing so, we can reinvigorate the faith with theologies that are life-giving to neurodivergent believers. Consideration of those with ADHD prompts consideration towards other disabilities, chronic illnesses, and impairments in the interest of theological inclusion and invigoration. In the third year of a pandemic that has disproportionately affected disabled and other vulnerable populations, this task emerges as a theological imperative. How can we make the Church more hospitable, healing, and reparative for its flock? Here’s a start: we would do well to avoid pathologizing a cluttered mind, and instead consider what may be ailing us.
Abba Moses says that “there are many…ways of seeing and apprehending God, which grow in us according to our labor and to the degree of our purification”. (11) As we consider the many ways in which we can encounter God, we should welcome and center the diversity of experience in parishioners. Neurodiverse believers can guide their congregation towards encounter with God in ways previously neglected or obscured by neurotypical preference. And neurodiverse and neurotypical believers working in tandem can invigorate the Body of Christ in ways previously unconsidered. In short, we must heed the call to attend to and amplify neurodiverse faith experiences. By doing so, we can best work towards a theology that truly brings all believers to bask in the presence in God, whose fullness can never be contained.
William Harmless, SJ, Desert Christians: Literature of Early Monasticism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 62.
Harmless, p. 14.
Ibid., p. 62.
Ibid., p. 228.
Ibid., p. 14.
Ibid., p. 62.
John Cassian, “On the Holy Fathers of Sketis and on Discrimination,” in The Philokalia, Volume I, compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, translated from the Greek and edited by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1979), p. 96.
Cassian, p. 97.
Ibid., emphasis mine.
Ibid.
Ibid.
