Thanks for listening! Subscribe to the newsletter at kylebrooks.substack.com. Feel free to share and follow if The Deep End has been helpful to you. Links from the blog:Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)The average human takes a breath about 22,000 times per day, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” (1 Corinthians 15:54). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kylebrooks.substack.com

In this episode, I share a sermon I preached on April 30th. It's not the best you've ever heard, but God used it. And oh yeah, it was totally improvised off the cuff. If you prefer to watch on YouTube, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLEbwWXwa_wFeel free to subscribe and go to kylebrooks.substack.com to get the blog and audio to your inbox. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kylebrooks.substack.com

I haven’t written a blog in a little while. And I’m trying to figure out why.On the surface, it’s a logistical challenge. The crush of Easter season in a church. Traveling. Toddler life. You get it.But maybe the reality goes a bit deeper. You prioritize what you really want, and I haven’t prioritized this lately. Why? Here’s my working theory.I’ve confused a calling to write with an identity as a Purveyor of Spiritual Content.---Subscribe and share! And join the community over at kylebrooks.substack.com where you can comment and subscribe to receive the newsletter in your inbox. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kylebrooks.substack.com

Do you want what Jesus wants?That’s a question I have to ask myself regularly when I think about unity with other Christians in my city, in my denomination and around the world. In this episode, Kyle lays out a spectrum of Christian Unity, and asks us to consider where our own hearts land between:CompetitionToleranceCollaborationPartnershipComplete UnityJesus knew we’d have different perspectives about important issues. Jesus knew we would sin, even against each other. Jesus knew we’d bring wildly different questions and cultures to the table of faith. But he still prayed for our oneness. I believe he still does. ---------Click subscribe, give the podcast a rating, or go over to kylebrooks.substack.com to get the newsletter in your inbox. Thanks for listening! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kylebrooks.substack.com

Thanks for listening! Subscribe now so you don't miss a podcast. If you want to get the newsletter to you email, feel free to subscribe at kylebrooks.substack.com. ---Show notes:Part 1: Introduction to Savor SeriesPart 2: SlownessPart 3: AttentivenessPart 4: Celebration in CommunitySermon on Sabbath, Humility and GentlenessSocial Security Administration History of Social Insurance in GermanyUS News and World Report on Average Retirement AgeData Commons link on Average Life Expectancy This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kylebrooks.substack.com

This is Part 4 of the Savor Series.If you want to catch up, here are links to Part 1: Introduction, Part 2: Slowness, and Part 3: Attentiveness.As promised, here's the Video of YouTubers based in Dubai who paid $95,000 to light up a skyscraper for their gender reveal party. I mean...what?!?!Thanks for reading The Deep End with Kyle Brooks! Subscribe on kylebrooks.substack.com for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kylebrooks.substack.com

Subscribe and share to support my podblog: kylebrooks.substack.comShow Notes:NBC News Articlethe Savor SeriesScot's NewsletterTim Keller - Kingdom Centered PrayerThank you for reading The Deep End with Kyle Brooks. This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kylebrooks.substack.com

This is Part 3 of the Savor Series. You can find the Introduction to the series HERE and Part 2, on The Spiritual Benefits of Being a Little Slow, HERE. “A Crisis of Attentiveness”They say the average adult attention span is down to 8.25 seconds. Less than the enviable 9 seconds of the goldfish. That may not be true, but it rings true to many of us.The endless scroll.Quick cuts and tight action sequences.The ability to flick from texts, to emails, to the news app, to our health stats with a deft movement of our thumb. We feel our focus slipping, our distractibility growing into a beast we can no longer keep tame. The attention economy—that vast subset of apps and entertainment companies that make their money selling our eyeballs to advertisers and our habits to…everyone—has created a capitalist battle for our brains.We are living in the midst of what Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, professor of business psychology at University College London, calls a “crisis of attentiveness.”And this crisis of attentiveness has given rise to a tidal wave of self-help books, blogs, apps and devices meant to help us focus.As I write this, I sit on a canary yellow, metal chair designed to keep me just uncomfortable enough to leave this bustling cafe before I finish this blog. There must be forty people packed in the 20x15 room, zooming and chatting and looking forlornly at their emails. I have my Beats Buds in on noise cancellation mode, my phone and tablet on “Focus Mode” trying to keep my eyes bolted to my screen despite the laughter in the periphery of my vision.I’ve been sitting here for almost an hour, fitfully trying to give my full attention to a blog about attentiveness. By traditional measures, I don’t struggle with focus. I spent four years in grad school, pouring over the philosophies of Augustine and Schelling and the theologies of Lesslie Newbigin and John Calvin. I could sit cloistered in my carrel for eight hours at a time, absolutely absorbed in tomes and treatises. But the truth is, I also struggle to pay attention. I’ll be driving with Steph down a street we’ve lived on for years and say, “Oh wow, when did that business open up?” She’ll look at me, slack-jawed, downright incredulous, “Are you serious? That has been here since we moved to this neighborhood!” Lost in my thoughts on a recent trip from our house in Oakland to Tahoe, I may or may not have accidentally crossed the bridge into San Francisco. That little glitch turned our three hour drive into a three and a half hour journey. Thank God there was no traffic at 8pm.So which is it? Am I focused or is it hard for me to pay attention? The answer is…Yes.The Difference between Focus and AttentivenessI believe that attentiveness is crucial to the spiritual life. But focus and attentiveness, despite gracing each other’s thesaurus entries, aren’t synonyms.Not being focused on someone while they are pouring out their soul is a failure of attention to be sure. But sometimes you can be so focused on the questions you want them to answer that you fail to pay attention to the cry of their heart. Sometimes focus and attentiveness are allies. Sometimes they’re adversaries. So what’s the difference?Focus is fundamentally about my mental state. Attentiveness is about my relationship to the world and the people around me. Focus is about narrowing my field of view. Attentiveness is about openness to all God has to offer in this moment. In fact, the words “attention,” “attentiveness” and “attend” are inherently relational. They all derive from the same Latin root: attendere, which literally means “to stretch toward.” Am I moving toward to the world around me? Toward the people around me? Or am I moving away from them?Attentiveness stretches toward the fiery autumn leaf on the concrete. It stretches toward the puffy clouds in the sky and the grand opening of the mom-and-pop shop on the corner. It stretches toward a houseless neighbor shuffling by, and toward the longings of loved ones on the couch next to us. Attentiveness is open to life. Attentiveness is not just looking, but seeing.Not just hearing, but listening.Not just touching, but feeling. But when you’re open to seeing, feeling and listening to everything, it’s so easy to get distracted!Distractible AttentivenessYou might say that Jesus cut quite a distractible figure.During one of his journeys, his boat landed in Galilee. And it looks like a series of distractions and missed opportunities.Now when Jesus returned, a crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him. Then a man named Jairus, a synagogue leader, came and fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come to his house because his only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying.Distraction #1: Jesus is about to give his next Ted Talk. A crowd of adoring onlookers are hanging on his words. But someone says, “My daughter’s dying,” and he’s off in a heartbeat. As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.Distraction #2: A little girl is dying. She doesn’t have much time. I can imagine her desperate father, Jairus, just ahead of Jesus urging him to hurry before she succumbs to her illness. The disciples trying to clear a path in the crowd. Another desperate person touches him. He stops. “Who touched me?” Jesus asked.When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.”But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.”Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.” While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” he said. “Don’t bother the teacher anymore.”Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” (Luke 8:40-50)Was Jesus distractible or attentive?Yes. “The woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling at his feet.”Jesus was constantly stretching himself toward the world around him. He moved at a pace where he could be attentive to Jairus, attentive to his own body, attentive to the woman, and, yes, eventually attentive to Jairus’ little girl, raising her from the dead. Jesus is far from focused, but he is deeply attentive. That type of attentiveness is fueled by a faith that God will provide whatever is needed in due time. How different from the frenetic fear that so often fuels our focus! (“I have to hit this deadline. Focus. Focus. Focus!”)Jesus’ faith-filled attentiveness enabled him to see, to heal, and to love whoever God put in his path. It enabled him to give up the spotlight to heal a little girl. It enabled him to notice and name the faith of a desperate woman. His attentiveness was the foundation from which he blessed the world.Attentiveness stretches us toward the world and the people around us. It enables us to bless others in a way we can’t when our eyes are focused on our personal prize. But the blessings of attentiveness stretch in both directions. The Blessings of AttentivenessMy cancer diagnosis in 2021 plunged me into a state of hyper-attentiveness I’d never before experienced. The chill of the wind on my cheeks was delicious. The buttery goodness of a steak was vibrant. The eyes of my loved ones were blankets that wrapped my thin body in their warmth. Life was teeming with life. As we are attentive to the world God made, to the world he declared “very good,” to the people filled with his divine image, we cannot help but come away with a blessing ourselves. As author Henri Nouwen said:“This attentive presence can allow us to see how many blessings there are for us to receive: the blessings of the poor who stop us on the road, the blessings of the blossoming trees and fresh flowers that tell us about new life, the blessings of music, painting, sculpture, and architecture - all of that but most of all the blessings that come to us through words of gratitude, encouragement, affection, and love. These many blessings do not have to be invented. They are there, surrounding us on all sides.But we have to be present to them and receive them.They don't force themselves on us. They are gentle reminders of that beautiful, strong, but hidden, voice of the One who calls us by name and speaks good things about us.” — Life of the Beloved, 81Maybe what we lose in focus, we can more than make up for in attentiveness, as long as our distractions are stretching us toward the people and creation that surround us rather than away from it. The slower we move the more distractibly attentive we can be. The more attentive we become, the more blessings we will notice and be able to celebrate.That celebration is exactly what we’ll be unpacking next week. Quote from a CommentA friend and reader, Johanna De Jonge, posted a comment about attentiveness on the Introduction to Savor Series that I just had to share with you. I hope it blesses you as it has me:We must be present to perceive the good all around us. The way light falls upon the flower petal at golden hour. The spicy, sour, crunch of a duro just prepared with lemon and Valentina - pulled straight out of the bag. The subtle anguish in a community members face who is "just fine".Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us, Johanna! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kylebrooks.substack.com

Thanks for listening! To subscribe, mash the subscribe button or go to kylebrooks.substack.com to receive the newsletter. TLDLFive Simple Ways to Slow Your RollWhat are some practices you can adopt in 2023 to slow yourself down and delight in life? Here are a few of my favorites, even if I don’t practice all of them all the time:* Write! Whether it’s poetry, journaling, blogging, or that novel you’ve been dreaming about writing, putting fingers to keyboard or pen to paper slows us down and makes us think about our experiences, emotions, opinions and beliefs. (Side note: It’s why I’m not using Chatbot AI to write this blog. It might save me time, but I need to take that time.) It’s incredibly hard to be both deeply reflective and quickly productive at the same time.* Practice Solitude and Silence. This one’s harder and harder to come by as a new parent, but it’s all the more precious for that. In solitude there are no people to care for and few if any tasks to complete. In silence there is no content to devour or words to generate. I’ve never been slower than in a yurt, or a monastery, or a cheap Airbnb in the woods completely alone except for the presence of God’s Spirit.* Schedule Your Limitations. Is the pace of your life too fast because your calendar fills up every week? Are you one of those people who does great with two or three nights of fun per week but is exhausted by four or five? Block out “slow time” on your calendar, and keep it like you would a commitment to a friend. (By the way, there’s a whole robust practice around this called Sabbath, but that’s a blog for later in the series.)* Do One Thing. Have you ever been watching Netflix while scrolling Instagram and replying to a text thread, during which time you were munching that amazing banana bread you just finished baking? I’m horrible at this one, I admit. But in our world of pings and screens, it can be a joy to turn off the phone and simply delight in one thing. Listen to one person. I know. It’s a radical practice, but I believe in us.* Pray and Meditate. Prayer is conversing with God at the pace of your soul. Sometimes it starts out frenetic and anxious, but in my experience God’s presence has a calming and quieting influence. Prayer recalibrates our spirit to the tempo of God’s Spirit. Meditation, of which there are many forms, can slow us down by helping us to hold one thought, one feeling, one verse of Scripture, or even one part of our body in our awareness, until we’ve had time to truly savor the experience.And it’s to that type of attentiveness we will turn in Part 3 of this series next week.How Do You Practice Slowness?I’d love to hear about your practices of slowness! Take moment to leave a message in the comments and share your experience with me and the community.We have so much to learn from each other. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kylebrooks.substack.com

GoodReads Profile to see what I'm readingWhat is a three on the enneagram? Remember, Beyonce is a three. All it Takes is a Goal podcast with Jon Acuff. It’s not the milestones, but the miles, that change you.Thank you for reading The Deep End! If this has been meaningful for you, feel free to share, rate and subscribe! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kylebrooks.substack.com