Inception demands sustained attentiveness. As AKMA Adam wrote in an insightful blog post earlier this week: “I don’t remember the last film I saw that made me work as hard as Inception to keep on top of what was going on around me.” Also like Tinkers, Nolan’s film requires attentiveness because it’s a movie about paying attention — to the complexities of memory and desire; to the mysteries of our dreams; to what we can and can never know about our deepest selves. What might be some of the theological implications of all this? Without forcing any tidy comparisons between religion and art, I think it can at least be said that the life of faith — of worship and discipleship, of theology and witness — is a sustained effort in paying attention: to words, to beauty, to ugliness for that matter, to everything around us. Paying attention makes liturgy possible; it grounds social critique; it is the source of praise and gratitude; it legitimizes despair and doubt. But a dying Christendom is so busy trying to save itself with marketing strategies and capital campaigns and church-growth initiatives that it has lost the skill and art of paying attention, of seeing such work, in fact, as central to the Church’s mission in the world. Nor do we seem to know how to invite others into a life of sustained attentiveness where there’s no glamor, no instant gratification, but where — by divine grace — we remember who we are and what we want; that is, where memory and desire are transformed and chronos time is redeemed by kairos time. A quiet work of fiction and a Hollywood blockbuster have given us a glimpse of the art of paying attention. Do we have eyes to see?
- Inception: The Art of Paying Attention in Books and Film - Debra Dean Murphy - God’s Politics Blog
