No easy, "centering," candlelit, feel-good exercise

"the meditative reading of Scripture was understood by the first generations of monastic Christians to be an arduous physical activity, undertaken as penance and ascesis.  By the labor of reading [(lectio divina)], the struggling ascetic might learn to purify his troublesome will and fortify himself against the unwholesome distractions of an incessant mental chattering (the logismoi, interpreted as demonic promptings).
". . . Meditative reading was [only] the first step in a long pilgrimage from the 'region of unlikeness' towards the condition in which the divine image would shine forth fully restored."

     Carol Zaleski, "Attending to attention," in Faithful imagining:  essays in honor of Richard R. Niebuhr, ed. Sang Hyun Lee, Wayne Proudfoot, and Albert Blackwell (Atlanta:  Scholars Press, 1995), 140 (127-149).  Zaleski gives a handy list of her authorities.

"A table without a remembrance of God is indistinguishable from a feeding-trough."

Source

Τράπεζα μὴ ἔχουσα μνήμην Θεοῦ, φάτνης ἀλόγων οὐδὲν διενήνοχεν.

     Leontius of Byzantium, Rerum sacrarum 2, On dinner (Περὶ δείπνου), PG 86, col. 2077B.  I was put onto this by Hermann Josef Sieben, "ΜΝΗΜΗ ΘΕΟΥ," Dictionnaire de spiritualité 10 (1980), 1412 (1407-1414).

Which will it be? Down or up?

"It may be that the [seventeenth-century] Pascalian concept [of diversion (divertissement)] will [only] be fully appreciated [(prenne toute son ampleur)] when technological advances, [and] those in cybernetics in particular, free up for a universalized culture [various forms of] leisure [(des loisirs)], while multiplying the possibilities for human action.  A choice will at that time present itself [(Une option dès lors s'offrira)] between the descent [(pente)] of a world diverted and doomed to catastrophe, and a world recalled to itself, in which liberation from [the various forms of] servitude [(des servitudes)] will allow for a spiritual ascent [(montée)]."

     François Marty, "Divertissement," Dictionnaire de la spiritualité 3 (1957):  1370 (1364-1370).

One cannot be content to reduce the tendency to diversion [(divertissement)] to an evil penchant for sensible multiplicity. . . [E]nthusiasts of the absolute like Augustine and Pascal [(Sans doute, on comprend que des passionnés d'absolu, comme Augustin et Pascal)] (see the nuances of Pensées 140) placed the accent on this negative aspect.  But it is necessary to recognize a positive value in the sensible and manifold universe in which our activity unfolds; it is the way by which we return to God; it is also [a] creature of God to be redeemed and sanctified.  One sees how diversions (plural) [(les divertissements)] and every human activity can be something other than a means of diversion (singular) [(divertissement)]:  they are an element necessary to the Redemption of the Universe.

On the distinction between "les divertissements" and "le divertissement", see col. 1364:

Diversions [(les divertissements)] can be one of the manifestations of diversion [(du divertissement)].  See DS 2, cols. 2374-2375.

This is helpful, too:

Distraction . . . is a weakening [(fléchissement)] of attention; diversion, a weakening of intention.

Full score please!

"Typographically the volume, crafted by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, is a superior piece of book-making—though lamentably with footnotes placed at the end of a chapter.  (What would be thought of a piece of music in which the bass clef followed some pages after the treble clef?)"

     Bruce M. Metzger, Review of The literary guide to the Bible, ed. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode (1987), Princeton Seminary bulletin n.s. 10, no. 3 (1989):  286.

"God does not fit in an occupied heart."

     St. John of the Cross, Llama de amor viva (The living flame of love) iii.48, trans. Kavanaugh & Rodriguez (Collected works of St. John of the Cross (Washington, DC:  ICS Publications, 1973), 628).

It [(the intellect)] thereby empties itself of everything comprehensible to it, because none of that is God; as we have said, God does not fit in an occupied heart.

Obras de San Juan de la Cruz, Doctor de la Iglesia, ed. Silverio de Santa Teresa, tom. 4 (Burgos:  Tipografia «El Monte Carmelo», 1931), 182:

pues que se va vaciando de todo lo que en él podia caer, porque nada de ello era Dios, pues, como habemos dicho, Dios no puede caber en él [(alternatively, from Madrid. Bib. Nac. Ms. 17.950, the variant translated by Kavanaugh & Rodriguez:  no puede caber en el corazón ocupado)]. . . .

Despite the phrase "as we have said" ("como habemos dicho"), an Adobe Acrobat search of the PDF of tom. 4 of the Obras (above) revealed no other occurrence of the exact phrase "no puede caber" in the Llama de amor viva (but two irrelevant occurrences on p. 365 of tom. 1 and p. 373 of tom. 3).

"The psychic machinery [of the false self-project] runs by itself, ever exacerbating one’s slavery to conditioning, and, moment to moment, steals attention from the real present and blows it like fluffy spores of milkweed down the lanes of the past or up the streets of the future."

     Philip Novak, "Attention," The encyclopedia of religion, 2nd ed., ed. Lindsay Jones (Detroit:  Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), vol. 1, p. 607 (603-610).

"not into those things which are about to be and be passing but into those which are before"

     St. Augustine, Confessions XI.xxix.39.  Trans. Chadwick:

'forgetting the past' and moving not towards those future things which are transitory but to 'the things which are before' me. . .

Trans. Pine-Coffin:

"forgetting what I have left behind.  I look forward, not to what lies ahead of me in this life and will surely pass away, but to my eternal goal.

The Latin, continuing on beyond this point just a bit:

praeterita oblitus, non in ea quae futura et transitura sunt, sed in ea quae ante sunt non distentus sed extentus, non secundum distentionem sed secundum intentionem sequor ad palmam supernae vocationis. . . . 

having forgotten the past; not into those things which are about to be and be passing but into those which are before; not distended but extended; not according to distention but according to intention do I press towards the prize of the supernal vocation. . . .

This is so indescribably rich in context!