The Attentive Life: Discerning God's Presence in All Things (Hardcover)

by Leighton Ford (Author)
Key Phrases: slow world, fast world, attentive life, Hurricane Ridge, Active Life, Grandfather Tinze (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Ford would seem an unlikely candidate to write a gentle, moving introduction to traditional monastic spirituality. As Billy Graham's brother-in-law and frequent stand-in, Ford's evangelical bona fides are unquestionable. Yet he describes the details of life at Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in South Carolina, with the eye of the avid amateur painter he also is. Reading this book you'll find yourself scribbling down prayers from obscure medieval figures like a certain St. Fursey. Ford is also appealing as he describes odd gestures he's willing to make in search of the God who's present in the everyday: hugging a tree, hugging himself in an airport with passersby all around, revealing his own struggles with his image and how to pursue God rather than his own self-aggrandizement. He does make a distinctly Protestant addition to the tradition of monastic spirituality, insisting that the most rigorous of spiritual practices are for all believers. The few missteps are slight: Ford's references to his heavy travel schedule and frequent vacations do threaten to make this feel like a spirituality for the upper-middle class only, and his readings of scripture tend to the emotive and literal. (May)
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Product Description

Distractions were keeping Leighton Ford from seeing God's work in and around him. So he began a journey of longing and looking for God. And it started with paying attention.

In these pages, he invites you to journey with him. Using the rich tradition of praying the hours, Ford will walk with you, helping you pay attention to God's work in you and around you throughout each day and in different seasons of your life.

If you're busy, distracted, rushing through each day, you might be feeling disconnected from God, unable to see how he's working. But the way toward him starts with a pause and a prayer with intention and attention and becomes a way of life, awake and alive to the peaceful, powerful presence of God.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 225 pages
• Publisher: IVP Books; Illustrated. edition (May 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0830835164
• ISBN-13: 978-0830835164
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #77,970 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, warm, spiritual, memorable book., October 18, 2008

By	Carl A. Dixon (Bradenton, Fl United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was given this book by a lady very much older than me who is still discovering life every day (I am 61). The man who led me to the Lord is a friend of Leighton Ford and I have met Leighton Ford some years ago. This book became better and better as the chapters progressed. I also read it slower and slower as I neared the end. Since I am an evangelical Pastor and Bible Teacher I was suspicious at first of Leighton's attendance at a monastery. But I need not have worried. If you are young read the chapters past your time of life with anticipation. But since I am closer to the end than the beginning I was emotionally and spiritually moved by the chapters closer to the close of the book. I can only say that this book has drawn me closer to Christ and made me more determined to slow down but keep moving - to pay attention but keep learning and to long for heaven but keep living on earth. I wish I could go for a walk with Leighton to the top of Grand Father mountain. I can only thank God for a life still being well lived and a book that has lifted my soul toward eternity.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!, July 27, 2008

By	Annie (Modesto, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This book is for the spiritual seeker. I didn't want the book to end...I read it outside, to be "closer" to God...I actually got my copy from the library but will purchase it because I want it in MY library, to be read again and again...Your spirit will draw closer to God and be more in tune with (attentive to) the present moment and God's presence.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A work of grace and beauty, August 19, 2008

By	G. W. Doyle (Charlottesville, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Leighton Ford's The Attentive Life is a work of grace and beauty, well worth multiple slow and attentive readings.

Coming from the mind and heart of a very wise man, this slender volume is redolent with truth and love. It's the kind of book that probably could only have been written by an older person, but that deserves careful consideration by people of all ages, especially young men!

Seventy-six-year-old Ford, a former world-trotting evangelist, recently a trainer and mentor of younger leaders, has stepped into the role of "artist of the soul and a friend on the journey." As an artist with words, he surely succeeds, with elegant, even poetic prose laced with pithy nuggets of his own and apt quotations from a wide array of skilled authors. Rarely has a Christian leader with such a well-earned reputation for character and spirituality revealed so much of his own weakness and shortcomings. One thinks of St. Augustine's Confessions.

As the back cover says, "Distractions and fear and busyness were keeping Leighton Ford from seeing God's work in an around him. So he began a journey of longing and looking for God. And it started with paying attention."

Under the rubric of "attention," Ford includes concepts like listening, alertness, and the contemplative life. Chapter One, "Paying Attention," would have been, as the saying goes, worth the price of the whole book, for it highlights how critical is attentiveness for finding "the way to clarity of heart," which is "the path to seeing God."

Seeing God, after all, is the proper goal - or end - of our existence, if we understand by "seeing" that culmination of all our longings and desires in the full and final, but never-ending, embrace of his love for which we were created.

The author wants to help us be "clear at the center" (his preferred rendering of "pure in heart") "and so with true attentiveness `to see God in all things, and all things in God.'" Such a quality mirrors the nature of God himself, who is a "Father who watches with careful attention." After all, God is love, and "love is focused attention."

By contrast, we learn how deadly distraction and inattention can be, not only in our relations with those around us, but in knowing either ourselves or God. "Perhaps inattentiveness is our greatest sin - not only against [God] but against ourselves."

How, then, do we overcome inattention? Ford follows the "hours" of the monastic rule to paint a portrait of a life which stops, looks, and listens seven times a day. Each of these "hours" is related to a time of day, a state of mind, and a phase in our journey through life, until death itself approaches.

I am hard pressed to describe either the loveliness of this book or the depth and relevance of its central message as the theme unfolds and develops with a remarkably organic flow. A banquet of gourmet delights, pleasing to the palate, delightful to the eyes, and nourishing to the soul. A diamond with dozens of facets, each reflecting and refracting light in dazzling variety. A tapestry of rich colors of every hue, complex but coherent. A bouquet of flowers. A symphony of ideas and images, with theme and variation, ending in a quiet but deeply moving climax.

But I cannot do justice to the variegated richness of Leighton Ford's style or the content of this highly-autobiographical guide to the attentive - and finally contented - life. You must read it for yourself. Soon. Repeatedly. Attentively.

G. Wright Doyle
August, 2008
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