Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a particular way of paying attention. It involves being aware of the present moment, usually by concentrating on the breath, rather than worrying about past or the future. ‘Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally’ (Jon Kabat-Zinn). Though the origins of mindfulness are found in eastern spirituality, aspects of mindfulness are also found throughout all religious traditions. In Christianity, prayer and meditation on Scripture help ground the participant in the present moment with God – this is a kind of mindfulness. Jesus himself encourages a practice of mindfulness when he says, ‘Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own’ (Matthew 6:34). Anxiety causes us to worry about the future – the tomorrows – but mindfulness grounds us in the present moment. The aim of mindfulness is not to get rid of the troubles of the day, but simply to notice thoughts and feelings as they appear in the mind with friendly interest and without judgement.

How to Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a skill that can be practiced and learnt. It involves focusing on the present moment by concentrating on the breath:

1] Begin by taking three deep breaths. On the final breath gently close your eyes.

2] Notice any sounds, smells, and physical contact with the chair or the floor.

3] Then turn your attention to notice each passing breath. Are they shallow or deep? Long or short? It may help to count the breaths from one to ten in your mind.

4] Give yourself a mental reason for practicing mindfulness – just a short sentence on how mindfulness will benefit yourself and others in your life.

5] If you find your mind has wandered into other thoughts and feelings, return your attention back to the breath.

6] It may help to note how your mind has wandered by mentally saying ‘feeling’ or ‘thinking’ to yourself.

7] Once you are ready to finish the exercise, begin to notice any sounds or smells. Notice the contact between yourself and the chair or the floor. Become aware of the space around you.

8] Then gently open your eyes and give yourself a moment to notice how you feel.

This is basically all mindfulness entails – a simple awareness of the breath in the present moment.

Stop, Breathe, and Think 
There is much to be said for taking a few moments in the day to pause and concentrate on the breath. Too often we rush around in our minds – always thinking and worrying about the tomorrows, when we should be concentrating on the present. In the Star Wars films, the Jedi Master Yoda often makes references to mindfulness. Speaking to the padawan leaner Luke Skywalker, Yoda says, ‘A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life he has looked away to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. On what he was doing’. Mindfulness, as Yoda suggests, is about paying attention to where we are – to what we are doing. It is a focus on the present. It involves participating fully in what is going on around you. Noticing sounds, smells, contact with the ground beneath your feet. It is a friendly awareness of thoughts and feelings passing in the mind. It helps us to notice thoughts as leaves passing on a stream, or as clouds in the sky, rather than being caught up in thoughts and feelings as in a storm. Mindfulness helps us to make better choices about whether or not to act on thoughts and feelings. It helps us to press pause in the chaos of life – to stop, breathe, and think about what we are doing. ‘Mindfulness is a special type of awareness that can keep us anchored safely in our bodies when the going gets tough. It can grow into a way of life that protects us from unnecessary suffering’ (Christopher Germer).

Mindfulness in Everyday Life

While the formal practice of mindfulness may involve sitting meditation, it is nonetheless possible to practice mindfulness in everyday life by doing normal tasks such as washing the dishes, eating an orange, or cooking dinner. Mindfulness involves concentrating on what you are doing and being present where you are. It is the repetitive act of directing attention to one task in the moment. It can be practised anytime, anywhere, while doing anything. It is a life skill. While this may sound easy, it is a lot more difficult than we think. Too often our minds will wander to other things when we need to be paying attention to the present moment. Our mind is like an untrained puppy, always wandering off, chewing your shoes, jumping on the sofa, and licking your face. It takes perseverance, kindness, and patience to train a puppy – and the same is true of the mind. So often our thoughts and feelings consume us, particularly if we suffer with anxiety or depression. Mindfulness helps us to train the mind to focus on the present. Anxiety takes us spinning into the future worrying about what may happen; depression takes us into the past worrying about what has happened in our lives. Mindfulness brings us to present – often a place of calm and peace, a place of rest even in the midst of a storm. It helps us to be in the here and now, at peace.

Recommended Reading  

Baer, Ruth, ‘Mindfulness Training as a Clinical Intervention: A Conceptual and Empirical Review’, Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10, 2 (Summer, 2003), 125–43.  

Harris, Russell, ‘Mindfulness without Meditation’, HCPJ (October, 2009), 21–24.

Hayes, S. C. & Chad, Shenk, ‘Operationalising mindfulness without unnecessary attatchments’, Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 11, 3 (2004), 249–54.   

Kabat Zinn, Jon, Wherever You Go, There You Are (2004).

Stanton M, Dunkley C, ‘First Steps in Mindfulness Skills’, Nursing Times, 107, 6 (2011), 22–24.

On the Incarnation

Athanasius of Alexandria (c.293-373) – a Christian theologian and early Church father – was a key figure in the Christological debates of the Patristic period. He was a champion of orthodoxy, high Christology, and Trinitarianism against the heresies of Arius (256-336). Where Arius had emphasized the supremacy of God the Father and ontological subordination of the Son, Athanasius defended their co-equality in being, power, and substance as distinct persons. Athanasius’ treatise On the Incarnation of the Word was a powerful defence of the idea of incarnation – the belief that God assumed a human nature in the person of Jesus Christ to redeem lost humanity. Athanasius defends the doctrine of ‘the Word becoming Man and His divine Appearing in our midst’ as a soteriological necessity. Only the God-man could redeem lost humanity. For Athanasius, the love and goodness of the Father are supremely manifested in the sending of his only-begotten Son to rescue lost mankind. The person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ – his incarnation, death, and resurrection – are the supreme demonstration of God's love to sinners. These themes are taken up below as expounded in Athanasius’ treatise On the Incarnation.

 

Creation and the Fall

Athanasius begins with a consideration of the doctrines of creation and the fall. Christ, accordingly, is viewed as the creator of all things. And the renewal of creation in the work of redemption ‘has been wrought by the Self-same Word who made it in the beginning’. There is for Athanasius a definite link between the work of Logos in creating the world and redeeming the world. Arius had viewed Christ in a creaturely capacity, but Athanasius assigns to the Logos nothing less than divine status as the creator of heaven and earth. Where the Epicureans deny any teleology behind the universe, the argument from design suggests to Athanasius ‘not a spontaneous generation but a prevenient Cause, and from that Cause we can apprehend God, the Designer and Maker of all’. At the back of all created reality stands the Word of God. In distinction from Plato whose Demiurge fashioned the world out of pre-existing matter ‘as the carpenter makes things out of wood that already exists’, Athanasius’ God is himself the creator of matter. For Athanasius, there is a divine Mind behind the universe, an infinite God who brought the universe into being out of 'absolute non-existence' – the doctrine of creation ex nihilo.

According to Athanasius, human beings were originally created according to the image and likeness of God and participated in ‘the reasonable being of the very Word Himself … reflecting Him … and expressing the Mind of God even as He does’. Nonetheless, the graces given by God in creation were robbed of humankind by the fall. This fall is the reason why the Logos became incarnate and assumed a human nature: ‘It was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgressions that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us. It is we who were the cause of His taking human form, and for our salvation that in His great love He was both born and manifested in a human body’. Human sin is seen as the privation of good anticipating the views of Augustine, and because of sin humanity tends toward death and non-being: ‘when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good’. In the fall, humanity lost not only graces, but the highest good, even God Himself.

  

The Divine Dilemma

God being good could not allow the devil to seize victory in allowing mankind to perish; yet mankind deserved justice for sinning against God. What then was God, being good, to do? The solution to this dilemma is found in the person of Christ assuming a human nature: ‘His part it was … to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all, and to be an ambassador for all with the Father’. In other words, Christ by assuming a human nature was able to represent and suffer for the transgressions of lost humankind in order to bring about redemption. This suffering on behalf of humankind is viewed terms of substitutionary atonement: ‘Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die and the law of death thereby be abolished’. For Athanasius, there is a definite link between incarnation and atonement – Christ not only had to assume a human body, he had also to die. He assumed a human body ‘capable of death’ in order that He might become ‘in dying a sufficient exchange for all’. Drawing upon Pauline language, Athanasius states that ‘by man death has gained its power over men; [but] by the Word made Man death has been destroyed and life raised up anew’.

Athanasius restates the divine dilemma in relation to the ignorance of mankind concerning the existence of God as creator: ‘was [God] to keep silence before so great a wrong and let men go on being thus deceived and kept in ignorance of Himself?’ To rectify this problem, God determined to recreate His image in lost mankind ‘by the coming of the very Image Himself, our Saviour Jesus Christ’. Only the image of God incarnate could recreate the knowledge of God in humankind. The Saviour graciously reveals Himself to the sense perception of humankind to restore the knowledge of God. Where human beings had turned from the contemplation of God above and were looking amiss among created things, the Saviour condescends and takes to Himself a human body. He moved as a man among men, meeting humanity in terms of sense experience, coming into human reality. Though assuming a human body, Athanasius is careful to observe that Jesus Christ retains full divinity as the God-man – as one who continued to direct the universe by His divine mind and might. ‘Existing in a human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is still the Source of life to all the universe, present in every part of it, yet outside the whole’. The wonder of the incarnation is revealed in the one who as a man was living a human life, yet as God was sustaining the whole life of the universe. Even upon the cross, He was upholding all things by the word of His power.

   

The Death & Resurrection of Christ

At the death of Christ, the very creation is said to have broken silence and confessed with one voice that He who suffered upon the cross in the body was not a man only, but the Son of God and Saviour of the world: ‘The sun veiled His face, the earth quaked, the mountains were rent asunder, and all men were stricken with awe. These things showed that the Christ upon the cross was God’. The reason Athanasius gives for Christ death was the payment of a debt to God. Upon the cross, Christ is said to have offered Himself as a sacrifice on behalf of all to ‘settle man’s account … and free him from the primal transgression’. Given the nature of Christ as the God-man, the death of all was consummated in the death of Christ; yet death and corruption were at once abolished because of His divine immortality. ‘For though He died as a ransom to all, He did not see corruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the Life Himself’.

As for the nature of his death as a public spectacle upon a cross, Athanasius argues that this was a necessary proof of his resurrection. If his death were a private affair, he would have been regarded as a teller of tales because there was no witness of his death, and nobody would have believed in His resurrection. For Athanasius, ‘Death had to precede resurrection, for there could be no resurrection without it. A secret and unwitnessed death would have left the resurrection without any proof or evidence to support it’. Having once let it be seen that he was truly dead, on the third day Jesus Christ rose from the dead in a body ‘impassable and incorruptible’. His resurrection gives Christians an assurance that death is not the end of all being, but the beginning of new life – a promise inviting hope and courage from Christians in the face of death, persecution, and martyrdom. And the evidence of His resurrection life is seen in the way He continually ‘works mightily’ in ‘drawing men to religion, persuading them to virtue, teaching them about immortality, quickening their thirst for heavenly things, revealing the knowledge of the Father, inspiring strength in the face of death … and displacing the irreligion of idols’.

The Breeze of the Centuries

In his introduction to On the Incarnation, C. S. Lewis suggests at the importance of keeping the past in mind and not merely being preoccupied with the concerns of the present. For Lewis, the only palliative to ignorance of the past is to ‘keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds’. This is certainly the case with Athanasius. In reading his treatise On the Incarnation, one is impressed with the great importance of orthodox Christology in the scheme of salvation. It must be said that Athanasius’ arguments for the deity and humanity of Christ remain as vital as ever in the faith and worship of the Christian church. The doctrinal themes of the hypostatic union and the life, death and resurrection of Christ are subjects of continual relevance to christians everywhere. And into modern Christological debates, Athanasius is a breath of fresh air.

Sources

Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/athanasius/incarnation [accessed Jan 2019]

C. S. Lewis, Introduction to ‘On the Incarnation’, https://www.uniontheology.org/resources/doctrine/jesus/introduction-to-on-the-incarnation [accessed Jan 2019].