On Spiritual Absent-Mindedness

This comes from Jill Carratini at Slice of Infinity:

Gallery statistics report that the average time a person spends looking at a particular work of art is three seconds. To those who spend their lives caring for the great art museums of the world, I imagine this is a disheartening sight to behold day after day. It would have been interesting to hear the thoughts of the St. Petersburg curators who watched as Henri Nouwen sat before Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal Son for more than four hours.

I wonder how often I am more like the three-second viewer than a captivated Nouwen, moving through my days with my eyes barely open. How often am I surrounded by the presence of God, but unaware and unseeing—missing, in my absence, the bigger picture?