The Spirituality of Attention by Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.
The Spirituality of Attention Presence, Wonder, and the Sacred Wild: A Theological Statement for Dionysian Naturalism Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D. Introduction Dionysian Naturalism has never named attention as its central category, but attention is what the tradition has been asking for all along. Its architectonic principle holds that reality invites participation rather than escape, and its religious task is to cultivate forms of presence adequate to the beauty, suffering, ecstasy, mortality, and abandonment of the living world.¹ Presence is not a metaphor here. It is a discipline of sustained, undefended attention toward what is beautiful, what is dying, and what has been left behind — the same three objects the tradition refuses to let its adherents look away from. A theology built on presence is, whether it says so or not, a theology of attention. This statement makes that claim explicit and draws out its consequences for practice. I. Presence as Attention Sustained To spea...