1.  “Situational awareness,” especially as it relates to the world of work, means hyper-sensitivity to all surroundings in a complex world, to maintain focus and avoid mistakes.  The accompanying biblical readings begin with Matthew 12:25, Jesus’ warning that the division of kingdom, city, and house can be fatal, emphasizing the need, instead, for unity and focus.  Ecclesiastes 1:8, observes that "All things are wearisome, more than one can express," in a world full of both routine and contrasts. Martha’s distraction (Luke 10:40) suggests that tasks (work) can “keep us off-message,” as the contemporary phrase goes. Often our plate may be too full, the burdens too great.   At the other extreme is boredom, an apparent epidemic among young people today.  Both burdens and boredom, I think, are products of our being too much IN the world, not OF the world, as Jesus warns.  Perhaps that should be our 11^th or 12^th Commandment:  “Be in the world (engaged, committed, caring, connected), not of the world (caught up in the Rat Race, the Acquisition of Things, the Judge and Jury).

2.  Lack or loss of “situational awareness” (worldly context), can become a spiritual issue, I think, involving Jesus’ ministry and teaching.  Jesus’ awareness is grounded in the “least among us,” from the perspective of the poor.  As Richard Rohr (Center for Action and Contemplation”) says in his Daily Meditation (11/29/09):

SOLIDARITY

Question of the Day: How have possessions interfered with my relationship with God and others? The poor of the world do not have the luxury of assuming that external things will offer them fulfillment. They don’t have access to them, so they have to find life at a deeper, more available, and more simple level. In that, they have a huge head start in the spiritual life, and that is probably why Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount with the very direct “How happy are the poor” (Luke 6:20). A woman in the Philippines once told me: “Father, we have nothing except God and one another.” I believe that’s the only thing the Gospel ever promised us. It offers us a path to God and a path to one another. Adapted from Simplicity, p. 169

3.  Is lack of situational awareness a sin?  I think it depends on perspective, such as being judgmental, labeling this “lack” as a “sin” in the dualistic sense.   I think Richard's “path to God” and the “path to one another” are inextricably connected and that a concern for situational awareness is a distraction, of the world, getting off the path.

4.  Equating “lack of situational awareness” with “insensitivity,” I think, is a

“dualistic-thinking” trap.  The former can lead to being “of the world”; the latter, can detract from being “in the world.”

5.  I think it is possible for the whole church to lose situational awareness -- if it is in the symbolic sense of being absorbed with the material world and losing sight of the spiritual.  I find it interesting and ironic that in a secular world, decried as having lost its spiritual compass (with only the trappings of allegiance, codes of conduct, loyalty, and family values), the sacred realm too often shows so much concern for knowledge, wealth, position, comparison, and judgment.  Has our world become “the eye of a needle”?